Ferrara

The Este climbed in rank as their court grew in splendour. Emperor Frederick III made Borso d'Este duke of Modena and Reggio in 1452, and in 1471 Pope Paul II made him duke of Ferrara itself. His successor Ercole I turned the court into one of the great patrons of the age and laid out a vast planned quarter to the north, on a grid of broad straight streets that later earned Ferrara the name of the first modern city in Europe. But Ferrara lay between Venice and the papacy, and when Ercole made peace with Venice in 1484 he had to give up Rovigo and the Polesine.

The golden age ended with the line. Alfonso II died without a legitimate heir in 1597, and in 1598 Pope Clement VIII took back the fief. The Este withdrew to Modena, carrying off part of their art, their artillery and the ducal archives; the papal government razed whole districts for a new fortress, shut the Jews into a ghetto, and left Ferrara a frontier town in slow decline.