In Episode 268, we shift our gaze from the Medici of Florence to the rival republic of Siena, exploring how the Albizzi family and their banking rivals funded the Renaissance through one of history’s most volatile industries: silver mining. We trace the rise of the Monte dei Paschi di Siena, Europe’s oldest surviving bank, and its pivotal role in financing the Papacy during the Great Schism. But wealth in fourteenth-century Tuscany came with deadly risks. We examine the violent clashes between mining guilds, the political assassinations that reshaped the city’s government, and how the discovery of new veins at Montieri briefly made Siena richer than Rome. Finally, we look at how the Black Death devastated the labor force needed for these mines, triggering an economic collapse that permanently shifted Italy’s financial center northward to Venice and Florence, leaving Siena to become a museum of its former self.
Podden och tillhörande omslagsbild på den här sidan tillhör
Fexingo. Innehållet i podden är skapat av Fexingo och inte av,
eller tillsammans med, Poddtoppen.
