Bologna

The prize changed hands many times in the 14th century. The commune wore itself out in feuds between its leading families, and papal legates, a local lord and the Visconti of Milan each held the city in turn, while the Black Death of 1348 halved its people. In 1401 Giovanni I Bentivoglio seized power, and his family ruled Bologna as uncrowned princes, with interruptions, for most of a century, until Pope Julius II excommunicated Giovanni II and rode into the city in November 1506.

Bologna then became the second city of the Papal States, and for a time it flourished. Charles V was crowned emperor here in 1530, the last emperor crowned by a pope; in 1563 the university was given a building of its own, the Archiginnasio; and in 1582 the Carracci opened an academy from which the Bolognese school of painting, with Guido Reni, Domenichino and Guercino, won fame across Europe. The plague of 1630 ended that season, cutting the population by about a third, and as the silk trade faltered and foreign students stopped coming, the old university town settled into a long decline.