Caterina Maria Romola di Lorenzo de Medici was born in Florence on 13 April 1519. Her father was Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino and ruler of Florence and her mother was Madeleine de la Tour d ...

And Catherine de'Medici, Queen of France, made sure she was informed of the intrigues at court by expressly employing a group of pretty young women to engage in pillow talk with gullible male ...

But Lorenzo de'Medici, wary of Pazzi ambition, kept his rivals out of government office during the 1470s. When a greedy nephew of Pope Sixtus IV approached the younger Pazzi with a plan to seize ...

Fisher pinpoints a year when the dinners of the European nobility started to become rather more refined affairs—1533, the year of the wedding between the 14-year-old Catherine de’ Medici (the ...