It was you, dearest Italy, from whom sprang the first University of the Western world, in Bologna.
And do you remember Petrarch, Florence, the Quattrocento, Michelangelo and Raphaël Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Monteverdi and Vivaldi… You launched the Renaissance, an invaluable gift to the whole of Europe. The wondrous development of the arts, humanities and the Enlightenment, the historical foundations of the rule of law, republicanism, the development of modern science – it made them all...