The History of Assassin’s Creed 2

A more detailed look at the characters, events, and places of Assassin’s Creed 2 that have been adapted from the real-life history of Renaissance Italy. This guide will analyse the historical accuracy of many of these portrayals and give an in-depth look at the history behind the game. It will also spoil just about everything that happens in the game, as well as several minor spoilers for the games Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.

Content warning: This guide contains the names and likenesses of people who have passed away. It also contains descriptions of violence and mentions rape.

The Italian Peninsula, 1476-1499

Left: The major locations of Assassin’s Creed 2 imposed on a modern-day map of northern Italy.

The Italian Peninsula (also known as the Apennine Peninsula) wasn’t always the unified Italian Republic that it is today. In fact, the land that was historically called ‘Italia’ has a long and storied history before, during, and after the Middle Ages. The nation’s modern-day capital city of Rome once served as the heart of the Roman Republic, followed by the mighty Roman Empire. The Roman Empire’s de facto split into the Western Roman Empire and the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman) Empire, followed by the dissolution of the Western Empire altogether in 476 CE gave way to the Middle Ages – a period that continued onto a hazy finish around the time of the Renaissance and the Age of Discovery.

Italia fell to the Ostrogoths during this period, after which it was then briefly reconquered by Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the Gothic War of 535-554. The invasion of the Lombards set the peninsula on course for roughly 1,000 years of successive invading kingdoms, with the Lombards being absorbed into the Kingdom of the Franks (Francia, or the Frankish Empire) by the year 900. By 1180, independent city-states had formed and joined together in the Lombard League to drive out the forces of the German Holy Roman Empire. This allowed the Italian city-states to prosper, with a powerful merchant class allowing increased political freedom and by extension thriving arts and academia.

Right: Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrocchio. Colleoni was a prominent condittiero of the 1400s.

But what’s this! Trouble in paradise! In the 1300s and 1400s, these city-states were constantly feuding and warring, and the Papal States grew to control significant chunks of the Italian Peninsula. Strong city-states absorbed the lands around them, leading wealthy merchant states to take a front seat in regional politics and form de facto dynasties. Few of these city-states had formal sovereign armies, instead opting to do battle with companies of mercenaries known as condottieri. The condottieri were usually from other parts of Europe such as Germany or Switzerland, but leadership roles among them typically fell to Italian captains. By 1454, the major players of our tale had been proliferated: Florence, Milan, and Venice signed the Peace of Lodi in that year, bringing something resembling peace to the peninsula – peace which would last throughout the burgeoning decades of the glorious Italian Renaissance.

Above: Leonardo’s Annunciation. Completed circa 1472-1475, this painting is one of Leonardo’s earliest works and roughly contemporary with the time period of the game.

This period of Italia’s history saw art, culture, and cultural art massively proliferate throughout the peninsula and the world. The Renaissance is typically recognised as having formally ‘begun’ in the 1300s, but it peaked during the 1500s and 1600s with the work of legends like Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo setting a new high standard for the arts.

This is about where we come in. Ezio Auditore’s story begins with him as a young man in 1476 and this chapter of it wraps up in 1499. After his story ends we see Italia fall once again into a period of conflict in the Habsburg-Valois Wars, be partially annexed and unified as the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy under Napoleon Bonaparte, be unified again as the (not Napoleonic) Kingdom of Italy, then fall into fascism under Benito Mussolini before eventually coming out of it all as the Italian Republic that still stands to this day.

Doubtless, Italy has one of the longest and most interesting histories in the world, but this guide will laser-focus on that sweet 23-year period that Assassin’s Creed 2 covers. We’ll discuss the characters, events, and places you’ll encounter in the game in order of appearance, plus a little extra on the side.

Religion in the Italian Renaissance

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1499-1502) by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (Raphael) depicts the resurrection of Jesus and his ascendence to Heaven.

During this period of European history, virtually the entire population of the Italian Peninsula follows a single religion - Christianity. Specifically the teachings of the Catholic Church, an enormous, immensely powerful Christian organisation headquartered in Vatican City and, at the time of the Renaissance, controlling a vast stretch of the central peninsula known as the State of the Church (or more commonly, the Papal States). The Papal States were an absolute monarchy, with the elected head of the Church - the pope - holding total authority over the area and its subjects.

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish preacher who lived in the first century and claimed to be the son of an omnipotent deity referred to simply as ‘God’. Jesus was crucified and executed by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem in the early CE 30s, and according to Christian tradition, he was resurrected and ascended to Heaven three days later with the promise that he would return to Earth on an undisclosed date and lead his followers to Heaven. In Christianity, Jesus was followed in his lifetime by twelve disciples known as the Apostles, and one of these Apostles - Syrian fisherman Shimon Bar Yonah (commonly known to Catholics as Saint Peter) - was the first pope of the Catholic Church.

The current Pope, Francis, photographed in the Vatican City State in April 2014 by Jeffrey Bruno.

Whilst the Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination in the world, the Reformation initiated in the early 16th century saw the rise of Protestantism - Christian religious movements that deliberately distanced themselves from the Catholic Church and, in particular, the authority of the pope. Even earlier, in our little slice of the 1400s, the Renaissance brought with it the onset of humanist philosophy, which places value on the agency and will of human beings as individuals or groups, leading to a collective questioning of the role Catholic Church as a supreme authority over all European Christians.

Today, the Catholic Church exerts control over only the Vatican City State - a small enclave entirely contained within the Italian city of Rome. Today, this state is the only absolute monarchy in the world, ruled by the current pope, Francis, who has held the office since March 2013. Despite no longer controlling significant territory, the Catholic Church is still a highly influential institution by virtue of its enormous membership of 1.3 billion - more than the total population of Africa and more than 16.6% of the total population of Earth.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2’s main antagonist is Rodrigo Borgia, a cardinal who became Pope Alexander VI in 1492, and as such, the forces of the Papal States and its allies are central to the game’s plot. The game’s overarching story ties major events throughout this period, including the 1476 assassination of Galleazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan and the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 to the machinations of Borgia, who, as pope, wields the resources of the Catholic Church as a means to facilitate his operations. The narrative culminates with protagonist Ezio Auditore travelling to the Vatican City State to assassinate Alexander.

Medicine, childbirth, and midwifery in late medieval Europe

Medicine

Anatomical Man (1411-1416) by Dutch painters Herman, Paul, and Johan Limbourgh, depicting how the zodiac signs correspond with the different parts of the body.

Medicine during the Middle Ages was not yet a profession in the same sense that it is today. Medicine was not an overly scientific practice, and much of western European medical practice was derived from the ancient works of philosophers like Hippocrates of Kos and Aristotle, which advanced archaic medical theories such as the obsolete miasmatic theory. The miasmatic theory was almost universally accepted in Europe and China since ancient times, and posited that the source of disease and other medical problems was the inhalation of miasma (Ancient Greek: “pollution”), an invisible, poisonous gas that came from organic matter such as rotten foods or decomposing corpses. The miasma theory led medieval civilisations to prioritise the elimination of odours that they considered to be a sign of the presence of miasma. This theory is the basis of the stereotypical beaked doctor’s mask that was adopted in the 1600s, which featured a long ‘beak’ in front of the nose that would have been filled with rose petals or other sweet-smelling substances, based on the belief that obscuring foul smells would ward off disease.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2 depicts some doctors as wearing the typical “plague doctor” attire of a beaked mask, robe, and hat, but this outfit was invented by French physician Charles de Lorme in 1630, well over a century after the events of this game. This outfit is often associated in popular culture with the Black Death, and by extension the entire medieval period. This association is widespread enough that it seems likely that this archetype was used in Assassin’s Creed 2 for gameplay purposes, in order to make doctors easily stand out in the game’s cities.

Childbirth

An illustration of a woman giving birth with the help of two midwives, from Eucharius Rösslin’s Der Rosengarten (German: “The Rose Garden”), a 1513 book on childbirth.

In western Europe, midwifery was exclusively the job of women, and male physician’s reputation would be negatively impacted if he treated pregnant patients. The ancient ‘medical philosophers’ focused almost exclusively on the physical health of men, and therefore women’s health issues, including those relating to the female reproductive system, were understudied, and midwifery was mostly practiced by women with little experience and no formal education. Among the poor, children were mostly delivered by the women in the mother’s immediate family, or her friends and neighbours. Midwifery was generally not treated similarly to other healthcare professions, and high rates of stillbirth often led to the practicing midwives being blamed and lynched for witchcraft.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, our very first introduction to protagonist Ezio Auditore is at his birth in Florence, during which his mother, Maria, is assisted by two midwives. Maria’s husband, Giovanni, arrives immediately after the birth, having rushed home from his bank in order to witness the birth. It’s unlikely that something like this would occur, as Maria’s pregnancy would have been considered exclusively the business of Maria and her midwives - something that Giovanni would not be involved in or be likely to discuss.

Republic of Florence, 1115-1532

Above: The Palazzo Vecchio, home of the Florentine Republic’s ruling body, the Signoria.

Centuries old even by the time of the Renaissance, the Florentine Republic in 1476 is perhaps the strongest of the Italian city-states. Ruled by the powerful Medici banking clan, Florence is home to all manner of artists, poets, and sculptors, their crafts facilitated by a growing middle class and the enhanced political freedoms of the Florentine government.

In 1469, Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici died, passing the de facto leadership of the city to his son, Lorenzo the Magnificent.

Above: Stefano Ussi’s The Pazzi Conspiracy, 1900.

A coup orchestrated by the House of Pazzi in 1478 failed to kill Lorenzo and its conspirators were all brutally executed. The execution of one of the conspirators – Francesco Salviati Riario, Archbishop of Pisa – led to Pope Sixtus IV (who had supported the Pazzi coup) waging a two-year war against the Florentine Republic. The war ended diplomatically as a result of Lorenzo’s own negotiation. Lorenzo was succeeded upon his 1492 death by his son Piero the Unfortunate, monikered as such because his rule lasted only two years before Charles VIII of France invaded the Republic. Piero accepted all of Charles’ demands and was forced to flee the republic in 1494 for fear of lynching.

Left: Gherardo di Giovanni del Fora’s 1494 painting Portrait of Piero de Medici depicts Piero ‘The Unfortunate’ di Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Piero’s disastrous reign marked the end of Medici power over Florence for several decades. Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola took up the city’s de facto leadership, calling for its citizens to denounce and burn all secular works at the ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ and return to puritanical Christian values. Savonarola’s reign collapsed in 1497 and he was burnt at the stake in May 1498 by a Florentine religious council, who found him guilty of heresy.

After Savonarola’s rule ended, Piero Soderini was elected ‘ruler for life’, and the republican dream was soon ended as the Medici were, for the first time, formally installed as the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Here is where this chapter of Ezio’s story ends. We see three distinct phases of Florentine government, with the beginning of the 15th century marking the end of the game’s story and leading into the following title, whose own historical period would see the successes of talented statesmen and strategists like Cesare Borgia and his biggest fan Niccolò Machiavelli.

As the birthplace of Ezio Auditore and other major characters (historical and otherwise) throughout the game, the Florentine Republic is the setting for the first act of Assassin’s Creed 2, as well as various parts of the story throughout.

Landmarks of Florence, 1/3

Ponte Vecchio

Ponte Vecchio, photographed by Nuno Cardoso.

Ponte Vecchio (Italian: ‘Old Bridge’) is a bridge that crosses the Arno river. It was the only bridge in Florence not to be destroyed by the Nazis during the German retreat in 1944. The bridge was reportedly spared thanks to a direct order from German Führer Adolf Hitler. The bridge later sustained heavy damage during the deadly 1966 flood of the Arno, which killed 101 people and destroyed huge amounts of rare art and texts.

In the game
Ponte Vecchio is the site of Ezio and Federico’s brawl with the Pazzi clan in 1476, during the game’s opening mission. In 1478, Ezio meets with Lorenzo de’ Medici on the bridge after the Pazzi conspiracy is foiled. The bridge appears a third time during the Bonfire of the Vanities in 1497, where it is blocked off by a condottiero in service to Savonarola. The condottiero charges pedestrians a fee to cross the bridge until he is killed by Ezio.

Basilica di Santa Trinita

Santa Trinita in 2013.

The Basilica di Santa Trinita (Italian: ‘Basilica of the Holy Trinity’) is a Roman Catholic church built from 1258-1280 on the site of an existing church from the 1000s. It is known primarily as the mother church of the Vallombrosan Order, an order of monks founded by Florentine nobles in 1092.

In the game
In the game’s introduction, Ezio and Federico race to the roof of Santa Trinita after the fight with the Pazzi on the Ponte Vecchio in 1476.

Palazzo Vecchio and the Piazza della Signoria

Palazzo Vecchio in 2013, photographed from the Piazza della Signoria. Loggia dei Lanzi is also visible to the right of the image.

The Palazzo Vecchio (Italian: ‘Old Palace’), formerly known as the Palazzo della Signoria (Italian: ‘Palace of the Lordship’), was built in 1299 as a symbol of the city’s power and significance. The palace was built on the ruins of the Palazzo dei Fanti and Palazzo dell’Esecutore di Guistizia, both formerly owned by the Uberti family. This location was supposedly chosen so that the Uberti could not re-establish their household there.

The Piazza della Signoria (Italian: ‘Square of the Lordship’) is a historical plaza in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. The plaza is considered to be the ‘heart’ of the city due to the numerous buildings of political significance surrounding it.

After the Pazzi conspiracy many of the conspirators were hanged from the battlements. In 1435, Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder was held in the Palazzo’s tower, as was the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola in 1498, the latter shortly before being burnt at the stake in the Piazza della Signoria.

In the game
Ezio’s father and brothers are executed in the Piazza in 1476. During the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478, Ezio pursues Francesco de’ Pazzi to the roof of the Palazzo and dispatches him, allowing Medici supporters to hang his naked corpse from the battlements. In 1498, during the Bonfire of the Vanities, Ezio mercy-kills Girolamo Savonarola before he can be burnt at the stake in the Piazza and gives an impassioned speech to the gathered mob.

Loggia dei Lanzi

The Loggia dei Lanzi (Italian: ‘Loggia of the Lanzi’), also known as the Loggia della Signoria (Italian: ‘Loggia of the Lordship’), is a building in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. A ‘loggia’ is a type of open-air courtyard intended as an outdoor communal area, and their role in Italian communities have led some historians to consider their design representative of the attitude of the Italian city-states towards communal life and government.

The Loggia dei Lanzi was built from 1376-1382 for the purpose of holding public assemblies and ceremonies, including the swearing in of certain Florentine officials. The name comes from a period sometime between 1537-1569, when it housed a group of landsknechte. The landsknechte were German mercenaries whose Italian name - lanzichenecchi - was shortened to lanzi and became the most common name used to refer to the loggia.

In the game
The Loggia dei Lanzi appears in Assassin’s Creed 2’s Piazza della Signoria, but it doesn’t serve a specific purpose to the narrative. It’s worth noting that whilst the game’s database refers to it as ‘Loggia dei Lanzi’, this name was not used until the reign of Cosimo I de’ Medici, almost 40 years after the end of the game’s story in 1499.

Basilica di Santa Croce

Basilica di Santa Croce today. The Star of David was incorporated in the 1800s by Niccolo Matas, and the bell tower was added in 1842 to replace a previous tower which had been damaged.

The Basilica di Santa Croce (Italian: ‘Basilica of the Holy Cross’) is the world’s largest Franciscan church. The basilica is also known as the Tempio dell’Itale Glorie (Italian: ‘Temple of the Italian Glories’) because it serves as the last resting place of historically significant Italians such as Michelangelo, Galileo Galilei, and Niccolò Machiavelli.

In the game
Ezio assassinates Uberto Alberti in the basilica’s inner courtyard during an exhibition of Andrea del Verrocchio’s sculpture in 1476.

Basilica di Santa Maria Novella

Basilica di Santa Maria Novella in July 2018.

The Basilica di Santa Maria Novella (Italian: ‘New Basilica of Saint Mary’) is a Roman Catholic church that serves as the principal church of the Dominican Order in Florence. The church was constructed by the Dominican Order on the site of an existing place of worship over an 80-year period starting around 1276, and it was eventually consecrated in 1420. The large church contains numerous chapels, including several funerary chapels built to house the remains of members of the noble Florentine families who financed the church.

In the game
In the game, Santa Maria Novella is the location of the secret Templar meeting in which the Pazzi conspiracy is planned and on which Ezio eavesdrops in 1478. It also contains the secret tomb of Darius (later established in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey to be a pseudonym for Artabanus of Persia), the location of one of the Assassin Seals.

Landmarks of Florence, 2/3

Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore

Santa Maria del Fiore in August 2013, photographed by Bruce Stokes. Giotto’s Campanile is also visible to the left of the image.

The Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore (Italian: ‘Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower’), commonly known as the Duomo di Firenze (Italian: ‘Florence Cathedral’), is Florence’s cathedral - the ‘seat’ of its bishop and the centre of the Roman Catholic Church’s power in the Archdiocese of Florence. Built from 1296 to 1436, the cathedral, along with the nearby Giotto’s Campanile and Battistero di San Giovanni (Italian: ‘Baptistery of Saint John’), is a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the central tourist attractions of the Tuscany region. The cathedral’s dome is the largest brick dome ever constructed and, until the completion of Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington, London in 1871, was the largest dome in the world (a record which has been held by the Singapore National Stadium in Kallang, Singapore since 2013).

The cathedral has been the site of historically significant events including the murder of Giuliano de’ Medici during the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 and the preaching of Girolamo Savonarola during his reign over Florence from 1494-1498.

In the game
In the game, the attack on the Medici family occurs in the Piazza del Duomo, outside the cathedral. The real attack occurred inside the cathedral during Mass. One of the Assassin Seals is housed in the Cathedral’s dome, along with the tomb of the fictional character Iltani, who is said in the game to have assassinated Alexander “the Great” of Macedon. Later, during Savonarola’s reign in 1497, Ezio climbs the cathedral’s dome to assassinate one of Savonarola’s lieutenants - a hypnotised priest who preaches Savonarola’s teachings from the top of the cathedral.

Giotto’s Campanile

Giotto’s Campanile photographed from street level in September 2007 by Julie Anne Workman. This photograph was taken from the east, on the Piazza del Duomo (Italian: “Cathedral Plaza”).

Giotto’s Campanile is a free-standing bell tower on the Piazza del Duomo, part of the complex that makes up the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. The tower’s construction began in 1334 under Florentine architect Giotto di Bondone, who died in 1337 after constructing only the lowest of the tower’s floors. The tower was continued in 1343 by Pisan sculptor and architect Andrea Pisano, who followed Giotto’s design carefully until his death in 1348 during the Black Death. Pisano was replaced by Tuscan architect Francesco Talenti, who completed the bell tower in 1359.

In the game
Though not serving a role in the story of Assassin’s Creed 2, Giotto’s Campanile can be climbed and is the highest viewpoint in the game. The upper floors of the tower visibly contain scaffolding and are depicted as being under renovation in the game.

Palazzo Medici Riccardi

Palazzo Medici Riccardi in April 2007.

The Palazzo Medici (Italian: “Medici Palace”) was the primary residence of the Medici family during the Renaissance. It was built from 1444 to 1484 by Florentine architect Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo de’ Medici, the founding member of the Medici family. Cosimo planned to design the palace’s exterior to be modest and not reflect the luxurious interior in order to comply with Florentine sumptuary laws which restricted how much wealth could be overtly flaunted in such constructions. The Palazzo Medici nonetheless became a point of controversy, with some of Cosimo’s contemporaries believing it to have been constructed using misappropriated funds.

The Medici continued to use the palace as a residence until 1659, when it was sold to the Riccardi family and its name was changed to ‘Palazzo Medici Riccardi’, which it is referred to as today. The Riccardi sold the palace to the state in 1814, and it is now a museum and the seat of the Metropolitan City of Florence’s government.

In the game
Ezio brings Lorenzo de’ Medici here after the attack during the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478. An optional mission accessible after the Pazzi conspiracy takes place in the palace’s interior, where Ezio rescues Lorenzo from attacking Templar agents. In 1480, Ezio receives the Medici cape from Lorenzo in the palace courtyard after killing all of the Pazzi conspirators.

Palazzo Pitti

Palazzo Pitti, 1890-1905, colourised.

The Palazzo Pitti (Italian: “Pitti Palace”) was commissioned by Florentine banker Luca Pitti in 1458, though the palace was left unfinished after Pitti lost large amounts of money in 1464 and died in 1472. In 1549 the still-unfinished palace was sold to Eleanor of Toledo, Grand Duchess of Florence. Eleanor’s husband, Cosimo de’ Medici, greatly expanded the palace, but its use was largely relegated to official state business. Eleanor’s son, Francesco I, Duke of Tuscany permanently occupied the palace and during his reign from 1574-1587 the Medici’s art collection was kept here.

The Giardino di Boboli (Italian: “Boboli Gardens”) were built behind the palace for Eleanor of Toledo, and were opened to the public in 1766. The Palazzo was later controlled by Napoleon, who resided here during his brief reign over Italy, and then by King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, who donated the palace, its contents, and its grounds to the Italian people in 1919. Today, the Palazzo Pitti is the largest museum in Florence, housing modern and historical works of art.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, an optional contract taking place sometime between 1481-♥♥♥♥ has Ezio hunting down soldiers of Pazzi conspirator Girolamo Riario after the men sack the Palazzo Pitti and steal a valuable map. The palace itself first appears in 1494, during the reign of Girolamo Savonarola, where one of Savonarola lieutenants burns controversial art in front of the palace. Savonarola himself is shown to be living at the palace during his reign, and at the end of this storyline he is taken from the palace by a lynch mob and burnt in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498. This is inaccurate, as Savonarola actually lived in the Basilica di San Marco during his reign.

Landmarks of Florence, 3/3

Basilica di San Lorenzo

San Lorenzo in March 2005, with the dome of the Capella dei Principi clearly visible.

The Basilica di San Lorenzo (Italian: "Basilica of Saint Lawrence"), commonly called simply ‘San Lorenzo’, is a large church in Florence that served as the Medici family’s crypt for nearly 300 years, housing the remains of all of its principal members starting with Cosimo de’ Medici, the first member of the family to serve as Florence’s de facto ruler (died 1464), and ending with Cosimo III de’ Medici, who was the second-to-last member of the family to serve as Grand Duke of Tuscany (died 1723).

Construction of the church begun around 1419 under the direction of Filippo Brunelleschi, the leading architect of the Renaissance. However, by 1442 only construction of the Medici-funded sacristy was underway, and the Medici stepped in to begin funding the rest of the church as well. After Brunelleschi’s death in 1446, the project was led by either Antonio Manetti or Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi - historians disagree on whom. By 1459 the church was largely completed in time for Pope Pius II’s visit to Florence, although some of the church’s chapels remained unfinished until sometime in the 1490s.

The Medici Chapels were intended to house the Holy Sepulchre - the tomb that, in Christianity, held the body of Jesus Christ - although Florence’s attempts to purchase or steal it from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem all ended in failure.

In the game
Ezio is ambushed by one of Savonarola’s lieutenants in San Lorenzo’s courtyard in 1494, during the Bonfire of the Vanities. Ezio fights off a group of enemies and kills the lieutenant on the roof of the church.

Mercato Vecchio

L’attuale Piazza della Repubblica a Firenze, prima degli sventramenti ottocenteschi (Italian: The current Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, before the nineteenth-century demolitions), a 16th-century painting by Johannes Stradanus.

The Mercato Vecchio (Italian: ‘Old Market’) was a marketplace in Florence, in a location which now houses the Piazza della Repubblica (Italian: “Republic Square”). During the days of the Roman Empire, the location was used as a forum - a public space used in ancient Rome for commerce, public gatherings, and general public socialisation. The site once supposedly contained a temple to Mars, the Roman god of war, and it has been posited that Mars was Florence’s patron god.

By 1000 A.D., the location was designated as a public space for the purpose of commerce. The marketplace wouldn’t have been called ‘Mercato Vecchio’ until some time in the 16th century, when the name was adopted due to the space’s proximity to the Ponte Vecchio. The Mercato was a densely-packed area of the city, and was designated as a ghetto for Florentine Jews during the reign of Cosimo I de’ Medici in the mid-1500s.

During the Risorgimento (a period of Italian history during which various Italian states were unified into the Kingdom of Italy), a large-scale restructuring called Risanamento took place in various Italian cities, including Florence. In Florence, which served briefly as the capital of the Kingdom, this restructuring included the demolition of many medieval houses, shops, and religious buildings in order to widen the area out into what was called the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II (Italian: “Palace of Victor Emmanuel”). Renamed to the Piazza della Repubblica after the Second World War, the location is today home to several cafés, as well as a thriving street performance scene.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, the Mercato Vecchio is the location of one of Savonarola’s lieutenants during his reign. Although the game’s database uses ‘Mercato Vecchio’ to describe this location, it’s unlikely that this name would have been popular at this stage of its history.

Ospedale degli Innocenti

The Ospedale in July 2012.

The Ospedale degli Innocenti (Italian: “Hospital of the Innocents”) is a historical hospital designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1419 for his first architectural commission by Florence’s silk guild, the Arte della Seta (Italian: “Art of Silk”), which built and maintained the building. The Ospedale is considered the earliest example of typical Renaissance architecture. Originally designed as an orphanage, the Ospedale’s purpose was to anonymously receive and bring up unwanted children. Children were taught different skills depending on their sex, with the intent that boys would grow up to become independent members of Florentine society, whilst girls were expected to either marry or become nuns. In 1660, the basin which the Ospedale had used for receiving unwanted children was replaced by a revolving section of wall that would turn and bring the child inside without the person leaving it being seen. The Ospedale was closed in 1875.

In the game
In the game, Ezio kills one of Savonarola’s lieutenants in the Ospedale’s courtyard in 1497.

Basilica di Santo Spirito

The Santo Spirito in 2008.

The Basilica di Santo Spirito (Italian: ‘Basilica of the Holy Spirit’) is a Roman Catholic church, built by members of the Augustinian orders starting in 1252. In June 1378, at the beginning of the Revolt of the Ciompi - a five-year rebellion of unskilled Florentine labourers - the Santo Spirito was attacked by rioters, but was defended by forces loyal to the Florentine government. In March 1471, large parts of the basilica were damaged by a fire during a ritual in honour of the visit of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan. Filippo Brunelleschi began designing a new church in 1428, but construction didn’t begin until after his death in 1446. His work was continued by Florentine architect Antonio Manetti.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Ezio encounters and kills one of Savonarola’s supporters at the Santo Spirito in 1497.

Italian Renaissance fashion

Women’s fashion

Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine, a portrait of Sienese philosopher Cecilia Gallerani that depicts typical fashionable attire at the time it was painted around 1490.

During this time period on the Italian Peninsula, it was fashionable for women to wear full gowns with V-shaped necklines. Women’s fashion was focused on accentuating the lower body, with extravagant, multi-layered skirts, and minimising the size of the upper body. Wide, puffed sleeves were fashionable and fur-lined sleeves were an extravagance typical of the wealthy nobility. Women would often wear up to five layers, making some clothing very uncomfortable and difficult to move around in. On the feet, heeled shoes were worn not for fashionable purposes, but to prevent the wearer’s skirts from dragging on dirty streets. Women’s hairstyles were an indicator of their marital status. Unmarried women typically wore their hair down or in curls, whilst married women would wear their hair in tight braids.

In the game
Most of the women in of Assassin’s Creed 2 are depicted wearing dresses. Ezio’s mother Maria and sister Claudia wear large, extravagant skirts and puffed sleeves, and most of the game’s female characters are dressed similarly.

Men’s fashion

It was fashionable for men to wear puffy-sleeved waistcoats under pleated overcoats, and a defining feature of Renaissance fashion was for men’s overcoats to be lined with a different colour to the main fabric. Hose or tights were common, and tight clothing in general was desirable in order for men to emphasise the shapes of their bodies. Hats such as berets and caps were popular, as were accessories such as gloves or hairnets. For hair, the fashion was to keep facial hair clean-shaven, and a straight bob cut with bangs was the typical male haircut.

Pazzi family

The Pazzi coat of arms at the Palazzo Pazzi (Italian: “Pazzi Palace”) in Florence, photographed May 2010.

The Pazzi were an influential banking family of the Florentine nobility. Purported in legend to have been founded by a Florentine soldier who was the first over the walls during the 1099 siege of Jerusalem in the Third Crusade, the first historically recorded member was Jacopo de’ Pazzi il Vecchio, a Florentine member of the Guelph faction who fought for the Pope against the Ghibelline forces of the Holy Roman Emperor at the Battle of Montaperti in 1260.

In 1464, Jacopo de’ Pazzi (a descendent of Jacopo il Vecchio) became head of the family, and in 1478, he, his nephew Francesco, and the Salviati banking family conspired to assassinate powerful members of the Medici, a rival banking family and the de facto rulers of the technically democratic Republic of Florence. The plot was conducted with the blessing of Pope Sixtus IV, who was an enemy of the Medici, and had appointed his nephew, Francesco Salviati, as an archbishop of Pisa - a Tuscan city that was part of the Republic of Florence - in order to put pressure on the Medici’s control over the region.

The conspiracy culminated in an attack on the Medici family during High Mass at the Florence Cathedral that failed to kill Lorenzo il Magnifico, the head of the Medici family. After the failure of the coup d’état, the Pazzi family were banished from Florence and the conspirators were hunted down and executed.

Currency

The front and back of a florin found in the Środa Treasure between 1985 and 1988, depicting the fleur-de-lis badge (left) and Saint John the Baptist (right).

The only currency actually used in the game is the florin, which was a gold coin used from 1252 to 1533. Originating in the Republic of Florence, the florin was the first European gold coin to see widespread use in the Middle Ages, and the influential, international Florentine banks allowed its usage to quickly expand across Europe, where it became the dominant form of currency used for large transactions.

The design on the original florin features the giglio di Firenze (Italian: “Lily of Florence”) badge on one side and the Catholic figure Saint John the Baptist on the other. Many European states began issuing their own florins, including the Hungarian forint, which was a significant form of currency due to the Kingdom of Hungary’s significance as a major supplier of gold throughout all of Europe.

Government of the Republic of Florence

Guilds

The symbol of the Arte di Calimala, the cloth manufacturers’ guild, displayed at the Orsanmichele (Italian: “Kitchen Garden of Saint Michael”) church in Florence. Photographed in May 2007.

Arts and trades in the Republic of Florence were controlled by a group of 21 corporations called ‘guilds’ that each controlled a different industry within the Republic. The guilds were divided into three categories, the Arti Maggiori (Italian: “Major Arts”), comprising guilds for legal professions, cloth manufacturers, wool manufacturers, banking, silk weavers, medicine, and the fur trade; the Arti Mediane (Italian: “Middle Arts”), comprising guilds for graziers and butchers, blacksmiths, shoemakers, stonemasons and wood-carvers, and tailors; and the Arti Minori (Italian: “Minor Arts”), comprising guilds for winesellers, innkeepers, tanners, dealers of provisions such as olive oil, saddle and harness-makers, locksmiths, armourers, carpenters, and breadmakers.

Signoria

The Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, the home of the Signoria. Photographed in October 2014 by Petar Milošević.

The Republic was ruled by the Signoria (Italian: “Lordship”), a council of nine members established by the 1293 Ordinances of Justice. Known as priori, members were drawn at random every two months from bags which contained the names of every guild member over the age of thirty years, with the exception of members who were in debt or who had served as priore recently. If the name was drawn of a member who had a familial relationship to an already drawn member, they would be redrawn as a means of preventing a single family from exerting enough power to establish a hereditary dynasty. The ninth priore to be elected became the Gonfaloniere di Guistizia (Italian: “Gonfaloniere of Justice”).

Immediately after their election, the nine priori would move their residence to the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence, where they were expected to live for their entire two-month term. They were paid a moderate sum intended to cover their expenses, and were uniformed in red coats lined with stoat fur. The power of the Signoria was not unchecked - the priori were required to consult with two lower councils - the Dodici Buonomini, a council of twelve members, and the Sedici Gonfalonieri, with sixteen members. Other councils also existed but were only elected when the Republic was determined as having need of them, including councils of security and war.

In the game
No members of the Signoria are seen in Assassin’s Creed 2, although they are repeatedly mentioned as part of the Florentine government. In particular, during the Pazzi conspiracy, Lorenzo de’ Medici mentions that the current priori are all loyal to the Medici family, and that Francesco de’ Pazzi’s attack on the Palazzo della Signoria must therefore be a coup to overthrow Medici rule by assassinating the priori.

Gonfaloniere

Origine della Compagnia della Misericordia in Firenze (Italian: “Origin of the Company of Mercy in Florence”), a 1425 painting by Eleuterio Pagliano depicts the body of a murdered woman being brought before the Gonfaloniere.

The ninth priore became the Gonfaloniere, who represented Florence and was personally in charge of maintaining internal security and public order. As a result, the Gonfaloniere’s duties included the general policing of the city and investigations of crimes. The Gonfaloniere was distinguished from the other priori with gold stars on his uniform. Like the Signoria, the post of Gonfaloniere was established in 1293 by the Ordinances of Justice.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, the only Gonfaloniere seen or mentioned is the fictional Uberto Alberti. After Giovanni Auditore’s arrest, Ezio presents Alberti with evidence that Giovanni and his sons are innocent. Alberti, later revealed to have been involved in a Templar conspiracy against the Medici, deliberately obscures this evidence and sentences the Auditore family to death. After his family’s execution, Ezio later takes revenge on Alberti by assassinating him at the Basilica di Santa Croce.

Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512)

Portrait of Amerigo Vespucci, possibly by Cristofano dell’Altissimo, circa. 1568. This portrait of Vespucci was likely painted by dell’Altissimo based on an older portrait that no longer exists.

Amerigo Vespucci was a Florentine merchant and navigator best known for his voyages to South America and the Caribbean Sea, and for later becoming the namesake of the Americas. Of Vespucci’s four purported voyages, only two are generally agreed upon as having occurred as Vespucci described them. The first of these two occurred in 1499, when Vespucci accompanied an expedition funded by the Spanish monarchy to the Americas. The expedition resupplied in the Canary Islands before landing in South America somewhere near what is now French Guinea or Surinam. Vespucci then sailed south along the South American coast, passing the Amazon and Pará rivers before turning north and resupplying in Hispaniola. The expedition then captured 232 people in the Bahamas to be sold as slaves and returned to Spain.

Vespucci’s second confirmed voyage was commissioned by Manuel I, King of Portugal, who hoped to learn if newly discovered land in present-day Brazil was Portugal’s to claim under the Treaty of Tordesillas, which divided up land in the Americas between the Portuguese and Spanish Empires based on several ‘lines’. This voyage left Lisbon in May 1501 and resupplied at Cape Verde before reaching Brazil in August, where they were attacked by the inhabitants, who killed and ate a member of the crew. Continuing south, the expedition reached a bay on 1 January 1502, which they named Rio de Janeiro (Portuguese: “January River”). This bay is called Guanabara Bay today, and houses the city of Rio de Janeiro, a major city in the modern Federative Republic of Brazil. On February 13 they returned to Portugal.

After returning to Seville in 1505, Vespucci entered the service of Ferdinand II, King of Aragon, who he continued to consult for until his death in 1512. Vespucci’s name was first applied to the Americas in Cosmographiae Introductio (Latin: “Introduction to Cosmography”), a book by Matthias Ringmann and Martin Waldseemüller. Ringmann supposedly chose to use the feminine form of Vespucci’s name - America - in keeping with the continents of Asia and Europe, which have feminine names. The name ‘America’ to refer to the continents quickly became so widespread that it was the only name in common usage to refer to this region of the world.

In the game
Amerigo Vespucci does not appear in Assassin’s Creed 2, but the in-game Animus Database refers to the fictional character Cristina Vespucci as a cousin of Amerigo’s.

Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan (1444-1476)

Portrait of Galeazzo Maria Sforza by Piero Pollaiuolo, circa. 1471. This posthumous portrait is based on a similar one by the artist’s brother, Antonio Pollaiuolo.

Galeazzo Maria Sforza was a Milanese nobleman who was the fifth Duke of Milan, holding the position from 1466 until his assassination in 1476. As Duke, Sforza was widely hated in Milan, and is infamous for his cruelty, personally committing numerous acts of torture and rape. His assassination was chiefly committed by three Milanese officials, each with a different motive - Carlo Visconti, a government secretary on Milan’s Council of Justice, believed that Sforza had raped his sister; nobleman Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani, the plot’s leader, hated Sforza for failing to intervene in a land dispute that saw Lampugnani’s family evicted from a valuable plot of land; Gerolamo Olgiati, uniquely, did not personally hate Sforza, but was a passionate republican who opposed Sforza’s cruel and tyrannical rule.

These assassins were supported by roughly thirty allies, and made no plans to escape after the killing. The assassination took place on December 26, 1476, when Sforza was arriving at the Basilica di Santo Stefano Maggiore (Italian: “Greater Basilica of Saint Stephen”) for mass. Lampugnani initiated the attack whilst kneeling before Sforza, after which he stabbed the Duke in the groin and chest. The rest of the conspirators continued stabbing Sforza, and after the Duke’s death, all but Lampugnani quickly escaped the Basilica. Lampugnani was killed by one of Sforza’s guards, and his corpse was beheaded and dragged through the streets by a mob before being displayed outside his home. The rest of the assassins, having made no plans to escape justice, were swiftly executed and had their corpses displayed.

In the game
Although Galeazzo Maria Sforza doesn’t appear in Assassin’s Creed 2, his assassination is mentioned in a pair of letters written by Giovanni Auditore to Lorenzo de’ Medici. The game’s opening act takes place in 1476, shortly after Sforza’s death, and it is indicated that the murder is the beginning of a broader Templar conspiracy which serves as the central conflict of the game’s narrative.

Additionally, Galeazzo’s illegitimate daughter, Caterina Sforza, appears as a major character throughout the middle and end of the game’s plot.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)

This portrait of a man in red chalk at the Royal Library of Turin is widely agreed to be a self-portrait of Leonardo (c. 1510).

Leonardo di san Piero da Vinci (roughly meaning Leonardo of Vinci, son of Ser Piero) was a Tuscan polymath from the hamlet of Anchiano in the Tuscan comune of Vinci, in the territory of the Republic of Florence. He was born out of wedlock to a local peasant woman named Caterina di Meo Lippi and wealthy Florentine notary Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci, the latter of whom later fathered twelve other children with two wives, the youngest forty years younger than Leonardo.

In 1460, Leonardo’s family moved to Florence and he began working in the workshop of artist Andrea del Verrocchio, where he was influenced by painters like Botticelli. Leonardo is sometimes cited as the model for Verocchio’s statue David and painting Tobias and the Angel, both painted in the mid-1470s. In the early 1470s, Leonardo’s father arranged for him to have his own workshop, but Leonardo’s personal attachment to Verrocchio saw him continue to live and work with him.

In 1482, Lorenzo de’ Medici sent Leonardo to the Duchy of Milan as an ambassador to the Duke, Ludovico Maria Sforza, and Leonardo remained in Milan until 1499, working on various projects for Ludovico, including a journey to Hungary, where he met Matthias I, King of Hungary and Croatia, who commissioned from him a painting of the Christian figure Mary. In Milan, Leonardo met Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno, commonly known as Andrea Salaì, a pupil who entered Leonardo’s household in 1490. Leonardo wrote that Salaì regularly stole from his household and was very indulgent, but Leonardo nonetheless continued to shower Salaì with gifts, and Salaì remained in Leonardo’s household until the latter’s death.

In 1500, the Battle of Novara saw Ludovico Sforza usurped as Duke of Milan, and Leonardo and Salaì fled to Venice. Leonardo’s work in Venice primarily involved military engineering, and he worked chiefly on methods for defending the maritime city from naval attacks. Leonardo worked in Venice for less than a year, and returned to Florence in 1500, were he was given a workshop by Servite monks at the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata (Italian: “Basilica of the Most Holy Annunciation”). In 1502, Leonardo entered the service of Pope Alexander VI’s son, the condottiero Cesare Borgia after he created a map of Cesare’s stronghold, the town of Imola. The map is considered to be extremely accurate for the time, and Cesare became Leonardo’s patron after seeing it. He later created a map of the Tuscan valley of Valdichiana for Cesare, but by early 1503 he had left his patron’s service.

Returning again to Florence in 1503, Leonardo began a portrait of Florentine noble Lisa del Giocondo, which would eventually become his most famous work, the Mona Lisa. In 1506 he returned to Milan at the behest of Charles II d’Amboise, the region’s French governor, where he was funded to pursue his artistic and scientific interests. From 1513 to 1516 Leonardo mostly lived in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican City State, where he worked on his art, as well as botany and dissecting cadavers. He entered the service of Francis I, King of France in 1516, and was given the Château du Clos Lucé, a manor in what is now the Centre-Val de Loire region of the French Republic. On May 2, 1519, Leonardo died in the Château, probably of a stroke. On his deathbed, Leonardo was said to have been full of regret, saying that he had not accomplished enough with his artwork.

In the game
Leonardo is a major character in Assassin’s Creed 2, who appears regularly in a role of supporting Ezio’s work as an assassin by interpreting the encrypted codex of Altaïr, the protagonist of the previous game, and using its contents to create new weapons and tools for Ezio. Leonardo first appears at his workshop in Florence, where he is a close friend of Ezio’s mother, Maria Auditore. Later, Leonardo accompanies Ezio as he crosses the Apennine Mountains to Forlì, where he takes a ferry to Venice and begins working in a new workshop there. Leonardo later helps Ezio to infiltrate the Palazzo Ducale using a flying machine and studies the Apple of Eden at the behest of the Assassins.

Alberti family

The Alberti coat of arms at the base of the Torre degli Alberti (Italian: “Alberti Tower”) in Florence, photographed in January 2005.

The Alberti family was a Florentine political family that became established in the 1200s and were banished from Florence twice - first after the 1260 Battle of Montaperti for their allegiance to the Guelphs, and again in 1378 for their support of the Revolt of the Ciompi. In the 1400s they returned to Florence and became allied with the Medici family. The Alberti family’s significance slowly faded after the 1569 creation of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, which saw the Medici formally ruling as a hereditary ducal family, and the main lineage died out during the Victorian era.

In the game
Uberto Alberti, a fictional member of the family, appears several times in the game’s opening act. He is Florence’s Gonfaloniere, and secretly a Templar agent who deliberately buries evidence that would see Giovanni Auditore and his sons acquitted and orders their executions. Uberto later appears at the Basilica di Santa Croce, where he is chastised by Lorenzo de’ Medici for using Lorenzo’s absence to have Giovanni killed, and chides Lorenzo in turn for his subversion of Florence’s republican democracy. Shortly after this exchange, Uberto is assassinated by Ezio in an act of revenge.

Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503)

Portrait of Pope Alexander VI by Cristofano dell’Altissimo. This is a posthumous portrait - dell’Altissimo was born more than two decades after Alexander’s death.

Roderic Llançol i de Borja (usually referred to by his Italianised name: Rodrigo Borgia) was a Valencian cardinal who was Pope Alexander VI from 1492 until his death in 1503. Born in the town of Xàtiva, Kingdom of Valencia (modern-day eastern Spain) on 1 January 1431, Borgia studied law at the University of Bologna before being ordained Cardinal-Deacon of San Nicola in Carcere after his uncle was elected Pope Calixtus III in 1456. The following year, he was appointed vice-chancellor of the Holy Roman Church.. These nepotistic appointments were common amongst popes of this era.

In 1492, Borgia proposed Valencia as a metropolitan see of the Catholic Church, and became its first archbishop shortly after the death of Pope Innocent VIII. As a new pope was in the process of being elected, Borgia was rumoured to have bribed one of the candidates - Lombard Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza Visconti - as well as others, and was elected Pope Alexander VI that year. Similarly to his uncle, Calixtus III, Alexander quickly began to use his new position for the benefit of his immediate family, appointing his sons Cesare and Giovanni Borgia as Archbishop of Valencia and Duke of Gandía, respectively. Alexander also planned to create new fiefs in the Papal States and Kingdom of Naples for Giovanni and his youngest son, Gioffre - an act which brought him into conflict with Ferdinand I, King of Naples.

Ferdinand I made allies of Florence, Venice, and Milan against the papacy, but failed to sway Spain to his cause due to Alexander having granted Spain and Portugal titles to lands in the newly-discovered South America. Alexander allied himself with Charles VIII, King of France and Ludovico Maria Sforza, a claimant to the Duchy of Milan. The conflict ended when Alexander made peace with Naples by arranging a marriage between his son Gioffre and Sancha of Aragon - Ferdinand’s granddaughter.

The tombs of Alexander VI and his uncle, Calixtus III at Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli (Italian: ‘Saint Mary in Monserrat of the Spaniards’) in Rome, photographed in October 2014.

As Pope, Alexander created twelve new cardinals - including his son Cesare and Alessandro Farnese, a brother of Alexander’s mistress Giulia Farnese. Alessandro would later be elected Pope Paul III - as a means of having greater control over the Sacred College of Cardinals. This, among other machinations, gave Alexander a reputation for corruption.

On January 25, 1494, Ferdinand I of Naples died and was succeeded by his son, Alfonso II. Charles VIII of France laid claim to the Kingdom of Naples, and Alexander allowed him to pass through the Papal States to invade, although he did so under the guise of assisting Charles on a crusade against the Ottoman Empire. In September, Charles began invading Naples and Alexander instead sided with Alfonso II, recognising him as King of Naples. In response, Charles marched for Rome, and Alexander appealed to Ascanio Maria Sforza Visconti and Bayezid II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire for assistance against the French. Charles arrived in Rome on December 31 and Alexander made peace with him by ceding Civitavecchia to him and sending Cesare to fight for the French. After Charles’ departure, Cesare quickly escaped him to Spoleto, and Charles went on to conquer the Kingdom of Naples. In 1503, an elderly Alexander died after falling ill.

Alexander’s family name - Borgia - has become synonymous with libertinism and nepotism. The defining characteristic of Alexander’s papacy was a determination to better the standings of his children - all born out of wedlock. Four of his children - Giovanni (c. 1474-1497), Cesare (1475-1507), Lucrezia (1480-1519), and Gioffre (1481/82-1516/17) were born to a Mantovano woman named Vannozza dei Cattanei. Alexander was known for having many mistresses, but it seems apparent that he had a deep and special passion for Vannozza.

Whilst depictions of Alexander in popular culture have been largely negative, focusing on his nepotism, corruption, and sexual promiscuity, it is worth noting that he was also a great patron of arts and education, commissioning Raphael and Michelangelo and founding King’s College in Old Aberdeen, Scotland in 1495. Alexander is also noteworthy for his treatment of Jews, which was substantially less hostile than that of other popes and the Catholic Church in general. He allowed 9,000 displaced Iberian Jews to enter the Papal States in 1492, and did the same for Jews expelled from Portugal and Provence in 1497 and 1498, respectively. It has been noted that contemporary negative perceptions of Alexander and his family can be partially attributed to prejudice stemming from their Spanish roots, and the view that the Borgia were outsiders bettering themselves at the expense of the Italian people.

In the game
Rodrigo Borgia initially appears as a mysterious figure known as ‘the Spaniard’, who is implied to have arranged the wrongful executions of Ezio’s family. He is soon identified by Mario Auditore as the leader of the Templar Order. He arranges the Pazzi conspiracy at a secret meeting beneath the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, and later appears in Venice, where he and the Venetian Templars arrange the assassination of Doge Giovanni Ser di Mocenigo, Jr. and his replacement with Borgia’s subordinate, Marco Barbarigo. Later, Borgia receives the Apple of Eden from his agents in Venice, but flees without it after he is overwhelmed by Ezio and the Assassins. Borgia is soon revealed to have become Pope in 1492, and Ezio later travels to Vatican City to assassinate him and prevent him from opening the First Civilisation Vault. Ezio engages and subdues Borgia in the Sistine Chapel, but spares him and enters the Vault himself.

Sex work in late medieval Europe

Portrait of a Lady, a painting by Jacopo Tintoretto (c. 1575) is said to depict the famous Venetian poet and courtesan Veronica Franco.

Catholic Christianity forbids any sexual activity outside of heterosexual marriages officiated by the Catholic Church. However, the Church also followed the teachings of theologian Augustine of Hippo, who saw extramarital heterosexual acts committed with a sex worker as a ‘lesser evil’ than homosexual acts. Although the Church gave its tacit consent to sex workers, women who worked in such a profession were looked down upon in most European societies, and as such the establishment of de facto red light districts and licenced brothels occurred in an effort to prevent sex workers from practicing their trade in more ‘respectable’ areas. Brothels allowed workers to engage in collective actions to protect their rights and livelihoods, although the requirement that they be licenced also often led to excessive regulation, including laws that prevented workers from living outside of designated brothels and laws that allowed workers to be raped at any time without the rapist needing to fear legal consequences.

In the game
Sex workers appear regularly in Assassin’s Creed 2. Groups of courtesans appear throughout each of the game’s cities, and several related characters also make major appearances in the plot. Paola, the sister of the Auditore family’s housekeeper, is a Florentine brothel owner who shelters the family at her establishment after Giovanni’s execution, and Sister Teodora is a Venetian brothel owner who helps Ezio assassinate Doge Marco Barbarigo. Both characters are later revealed to be members of the Assassins.

Body armour in late medieval Europe

A suit of armour created by Antonio Missaglia, circa. 1450. This suit may be the basis for Assassin’s Creed 2’s ‘Missaglias Armour’. It is on display at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, United States of America.

The first evidence of humans using personal body armour comes from the Stele of Vultures, an ancient Sumerian monument from somewhere between 2600 and 2350 BCE. The Dendra panoply, an Ancient Greek suit of bronze plate armour has been dated to roughly 1400 BCE. Mail, a type of mesh made of interlocking metal rings, was invented around 500 BCE, probably by the Celts, and remained the most popular kind of personal body armour in western Europe until the early 1400s.

In the 1400s, increase in the price of labour in the wake of the Black Death meant that the less labour-intensive plate armour quickly became cheaper and therefore more common across western Europe. Plate armour (the kind associated with the typical medieval knight) peaked in popularity shortly before and after 1500, overlapping somewhat with the advent of firearms. Early firearms’ projectiles moved at a velocity too low to penetrate most plate armour, and such weapons were even used to test plate breastplates. After such a test, engravings would be made to encircle the point of impact - a spot which was referred to as the ‘proof’.

A full suit of plate armour would have weighed 15-25 kilograms, but it generally would not have significantly slowed or inhibited the movement of the wearer due to the even spread of this weight throughout the entire body. Although the most popular medieval stereotype is the fully plate-clad soldier, it was actually very popular for soldiers to cover only parts of their bodies in armour due to the high cost of a full suit. A cuirass to cover the torso and a helmet are the most common examples, as they protect the most vital organs of the body.

As firearms became more powerful, metal armour was no longer a viable option against them, not only because the projectiles could penetrate armour, but also because it simply became more financially sustainable for armies to be made up of lightly-armoured or unarmoured soldiers carrying firearms themselves. Light plate armour continued to be used by mounted soldiers, generals, and nobles until the 1710s, for both practical and ceremonial purposes, but it was typically not a popular method of personal protection after the end of the Renaissance period.

An English police officer wears a bullet-proof vest whilst guarding the entrance to Downing Street in London, United Kingdom. Photographed in June 2005 by Adrian Pingstone.

In the modern period, some forms of metal body armour have been used. Individual soldiers purchased and used metal vests on both sides of the American Civil War of the 1860s, and both World Wars of the 20th century saw limited use of similar armour. The most recent successful use of a suit of plate armour was by Australian cultural icon Ned Kelly, a bushranger whose gang used suits of thick iron armour to protect themselves during their exploits in the Colony of Victoria in the late 1800s. Today, personal body armour is widely used for military and police personnel around the world, although it is overwhelmingly made of synthetic materials like poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide - a material designed by American chemist Stephanie Kwolek and branded ‘Kevlar’ by her employer, DuPont de Nemours.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2’s depiction of armour is, in some ways, more accurate than many casually-researched historical depictions. For instance, the majority of the enemies that Ezio fights are only partially armoured, like the ‘agile’ guard, who wears a cuirass, pauldrons, and a helmet, or the regular soldiers, who wear no plate armour at all. The one exception is the ‘brute’ enemy, who wears a full suit and is shown to be slowed down significantly by its weight. Ezio himself can purchase different types of armour, ranging from leather to metal plates, but he, like many combatants of the time, never wears the full suit of armour, instead sticking to the cuirass, one gauntlet, and one pauldron. An interesting thing to note is that the strongest armour that can be purchased from shops is called the ‘Missaglias Armour’, probably a reference to Antonio Missaglia, a Lombard armourer who produced armour for Milanese nobles and knights.

The one major thing that Assassin’s Creed 2 gets wrong about armour is that the people Ezio mostly fights are city guards, and as a result… probably wouldn’t be wearing any armour at all. Plate armour was popular among armed forces, but city guards would be more likely to simply wear whatever clothing they owned.

Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492)

Portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1555-1565) by Agnolo “Bronzino” di Cosimo. This portrait was painted more than fifty years after Lorenzo’s death.

Lorenzo de’ Medici, often referred to as Lorenzo il Magnifico (Italian: “Lorenzo the Magnificent”), was a Florentine nobleman who served as the Republic’s de facto leader for the majority of his adult life. Like his father and grandfather before him, Lorenzo ruled the technically democratic Republic of Florence by using strategically arranged marriages, bribery, and other machinations to exert control over the democratically elected officials in the Florentine government. As the third consecutive member of his family to operate in this way, Lorenzo particularly earned the resentment of other Florentine noble families, who perceived the Medici as a dynasty in all but name. The most notable of the Medici’s Florentine rivals were the Pazzi family - a rivalry that came to a head in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, a Pazzi-organised assassination attempt against Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano that was conducted with the support of the Pope, Sixtus IV. The attack saw Giuliano brutally killed, but Lorenzo survived with a minor neck wound, and the coup d’état failed to usurp him.

In response, Sixtus IV excommunicated the Medici and the entire Florentine government, issuing an interdict over the Republic. Planning an invasion of Florence, Sixtus IV allied himself with Ferdinand I, King of Naples, and a war broke out between Florence and Naples. The conflict ended diplomatically after Lorenzo personally travelled to Naples and voluntarily became a prisoner of Ferdinand. His successful defusal of this situation was good for Lorenzo’s reputation, and allowed him to enact constitutional changes in Florence that greatly increased his personal power.

The Medici - Lorenzo especially - were known as great patrons of the arts, and whilst Lorenzo did not personally commission many works, he facilitated many artists in finding their own commissions. He himself was also an enthusiastic poet, writing in his native Tuscan language. Lorenzo was also a connoisseur of books, expanding the Laurentian Library begun by his grandfather, Cosimo de’ Medici, and going to great lengths to copy and disseminate the collection’s books throughout Europe. Lorenzo’s passion for fine art was also a diplomatic tool, as evidenced by his having commissioned murals in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel in order to strengthen an alliance with his former enemy, Pope Sixtus IV.

Ritratto di Lorenzo Il Magnifico (Italian: “Portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent”) (c. 1533-1534), a posthumous portrait of Lorenzo by Giorgio Vasari.

Later in life, Lorenzo fell into financial hardship, misappropriating Florentine state funds for himself. Lorenzo died on April 8, 1492 at the family’s Villa Medicea di Careggi, during Girolamo Savonarola’s reign over Florence. Lorenzo was succeeded by his eldest son, Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici. Known as Piero “the Unfortunate”, his reign was disastrous and saw the end of the Medici’s de facto dynasty. Lorenzo’s nephew and adopted son, Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, would eventually be elected Pope Clement VII, and used his influence to install Alessandro de’ Medici as Florence’s first Duke in 1531, establishing for the first time a formal Medici dynasty to rule Florence.

During Lorenzo’s de facto reign over Florence, he fostered good relations with Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire in order to maintain a thriving maritime trade between the two states, as this trade was a major source of the Medici family’s personal wealth. He also made maintaining balance between the powerful states of the Italic League a priority. The League contained the Republics of Florence and Venice, as well as the Kingdom of Naples, Duchy of Milan, and the powerful Papal States, and Lorenzo’s diplomatic efforts to keep these states balanced put him into conflict with Pope Sixtus IV and his ambitions of territorial expansion. The peace established within the Italic League allowed economies on the Italian Peninsula to recover following the Black Death, and Lorenzo was it’s greatest advocate and maintainer. With his death in 1492, the League quickly declined, and collapsed amidst the Italian Wars of the first half of the 16th century.

Monteriggioni

Monteriggioni, photographed from the nearby hills in February 2008.

Monteriggioni is a walled town in Tuscany, in the modern-day Italian province of Siena. The town is considered architecturally significant for its well-preserved buildings and culturally significant for having been used by Dante Alighieri as a comparison to the appearance of Hell in his Divine Comedy. Built between 1214 and 1219 by the forces of the Republic of Siena as a fortification in a long conflict with the Republic of Florence, the town was eventually given directly to the Medici family in 1554 as an act of peace. This act was considered a betrayal by the people of Monteriggioni, who had fought against Florence for centuries.

In the game
Monteriggioni is a major location in Assassin’s Creed 2, serving as the headquarters for Ezio’s uncle, Mario Auditore and the ancestral home of the Auditore family. Living in the Villa Auditore at the top of the town, Ezio is able to renovate parts of the town and construct new projects as a source of income. Like the Auditore family itself, the Villa is a fictional invention, based on the appearance of the Villa di Maiano, which is actually situated in Fiesole, near Florence. The layout of the town inside the walls is largely fictional in the game, and there is no central building overlooking the entire town in the real Monteriggioni. When Ezio arrives at Monteriggioni, he mentions that he had believed Monteriggioni to be an enemy of Florence, which is consistent with the real-life town’s history. The reference in the Divine Comedy is also lampshaded by a side mission which mentions that Dante Alighieri was a mentor of Ezio’s ancestor, Domenico Auditore.

Swordsmanship

Condottieri

San Gimignano

San Gimignano’s central plaza, the Piazza della Cisterna (Italian: “Plaza of the Cistern”), photographed in July 2008.

Named after the Catholic Saint Geminianus, San Gimignano is a Tuscan town famous around the world for its well-preserved medieval architecture. Built on a hilltop in what is now the Italian Republic province of Siena, the town’s centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is today well-known as the ‘Town of Fine Towers’ and for the Vernaccia di San Gimignano, wine made from grapes native to the area that is considered one of Italy’s finest white wines.

The town’s history dates back to the 3rd century BCE, where it was the site of an ancient Etruscan village. In the 1st century CE, a castle was built here and named Silvia. In 450 CE the castle was renamed San Gimignano after Saint Geminianus, who prevented the castle from being destroyed by the forces of Atilla the Hun. During the 600s and 700s, the walled town was built around the castle, and by the Renaissance period, it was a popular destination for Catholics on pilgrimages to Rome. The surrounding lands were fertile, and the town’s development hinged on the production of productions such as saffron and the aforementioned wine from Vernaccia grapes.

From roughly 1200-1400, rivalries between important families within San Gimignano led the town’s skyline to be dominated by increasingly tall tower houses as each tried to outdo the others. This eventually led the local government to forbid the building of any tower higher than the 52-metre tall Torre Rognosa (Italian: “Mangy Tower”). In 1348, the Black Death reached San Gimignano, and killed around half of the town’s population, prompting the independent local government to voluntarily submit itself to the rule of the Republic of Florence. Under Florence’s rule, a few palaces were built in the town in the Florentine style, and some of the town’s taller towers were reduced in height. From this point on, however, San Gimignano saw little architectural development, largely remaining preserved in its medieval state until the present day.

Landmarks of San Gimignano

Palazzo Comunale / Palazzo del Popolo

The Palazzo Comunale photographed in May 2009.

The Palazzo Comunale (Italian: “Municipal Palace”), also known as the Palazzo del Popolo (Italian: “People’s Palace”), is the seat of the local government of the San Gimignano comune, and has been since the 1200s. Built between 1289 and 1298 over the ruins of an existing building, it was further expanded in the 1300s and is capped by the 54-metre Torre Grossa (Italian: “Great Tower”), the tallest tower in San Gimignano.

Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta

The church photographed in May 2009.

The Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta (Italian: “Collegiate Church of the Assumption of Mary”) is a Catholic church in San Gimignano. Originally built in the 900s, its significance skyrocketed in the 1100s as San Gimignano itself became a common stopping point for Catholic pilgrims travelling to Rome. The current iteration of the church was consecrated by Pope Eugenius III in November 1148 and dedicated to the town’s namesake, Saint Geminianus. During the Renaissance, the church had frescos and sculptures added, and was extended by Tuscan architect Giuliano da Maiaino between 1466 and 1468. During the Second World War, the church was damaged, and during the 1951 restoration effort, a previously buried section of a previous church was discovered beneath the damaged area.

In the game
During Mario and Ezio’s attack on San Gimignano in 1478, the two rendezvous outside this church whilst fighting Pazzi soldiers.

Torre dei Diavolo

The tower photographed in May 2007, with the attached Palazzo dei Cortesi (Italian: “Palace of the Courteous”).

The Torre dei Diavolo (Italian: “Devil’s Tower”) is a tower in San Gimignano, easily identifiable by the prongs near the top that likely would have supported a wooden walkway. The source of the name is disputed. It either comes from a superstitious belief that the tower having been struck by lightning was a Satanic omen, or from a legend that purports that the tower’s owner returned to San Gimignano after a long journey to find it taller than it was when he had left it. Having not ordered any new additions to the tower before his journey, the owner attributed the new section of the tower to the work of the devil.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, the Torre dei Diavolo is the location of one of the game’s glyphs.

Torre Grossa

Torre Grossa photographed in May 2007, with the Santa Maria Assunta visible to the right of the frame.

The Torre Grossa (Italian: “Great Tower”) is the best-known medieval tower in Tuscany. Attached to the Palazzo Comunale in San Gimignano, the Grossa is the tallest tower in San Gimignano at 54 metres high.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Torre Grossa is the location of the tomb of fictional Chinese Assassin Wei Yu and his associated Assassin Seal.

Torre Rognosa

The Torre Rognosa photographed from the Torre Grossa in March 2015.

The Torre Rognosa (Italian: “Mangy Tower”), commonly known as the Clock Tower or Podestà Tower, is a clock tower in San Gimignano. The second-tallest tower in the town at 52 metres, the Rognosa was used as a marker in 1255 for the maximum height that towers in San Gimignano were permitted to be built to.

In the game
The Torre Rognosa appears in Assassin’s Creed 2 as a viewpoint, but it doesn’t have a role in the game’s story.

Torri dei Salvucci

The towers, photographed from the Torre Grossa in March 2015.

The Torri dei Salvucci (Italian: “Salvucci Towers”) are a pair of towers built in the 1200s by the Salvucci - a powerful San Gimignano family - as a show of their dominance over the town. Originally built higher than the 1255 limit that restricted tower heights to 52 metres, both were cut down in size by the local government to be in line with the regulations. The Salvucci family, belonging to the Guelph faction in support of the Pope, were embroiled in a bitter rivalry with the Ardinghelli, a Ghibelline family - supporters of the Holy Roman Emperor - who also built twin towers of this kind on the opposite end of the square - the Torre degli Ardinghelli (Italian: Ardinghelli Towers). One of the two towers is slightly taller, and is called the Torre Salvucci Maggiore (Italian: “Great Salvucci Tower”).

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, the Torri dei Salvucci are the location of a glyph.

Landmarks of rural Tuscany

Villa Medicea di Careggi

The villa photographed in July 2009.

The Villa Medicea di Careggi (Italian: “Villa Medici at Careggi”), was constructed around 1325 and purchased in 1417 by Lorenzo the Elder, a member of the Medici family. Like most rural villas owned by Italian nobles, the villa was maintained as a fully-functional farm so that the grounds and residents would be entirely self-sufficient. The Medici used their villas similarly to modern-day holiday homes, and several important Medici members died at the villa, including Cosimo the Old in 1464 and Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1492. The villa was largely disused after Lorenzo’s death until 1779, when it was purchased by heirs of the Orsi family, who sold it to Englishman Francis Sloane in 1848. Today, the villa is owned by the Tuscan public administration and is closed for restoration.

In the game
This villa doesn’t appear in Assassin’s Creed 2, but it is mentioned in the first act by a member of the Medici household, who tells Ezio that Lorenzo de’ Medici is away at the villa and is unable to receive the letter from Giovanni Auditore. It is layered implied that Uberto Alberti and other Templar conspirators used Lorenzo’s absence as an opportunity to have Giovanni and his sons killed.

Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore

The abbey photographed in October 2007.

The Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore (Italian: “Territorial Abbey of the Greater Mount of Olives”) is a Benedictine monastery in rural Tuscany. Founded in 1313 by prominent Tuscan jurist Bernardo Tolomei, construction on the monastery began in 1320, and its congregation was approved by Pope Clement VI in 1344.

In the game
Ezio tracks Pazzi conspirator Stefano da Bagnone to the abbey and kills him in 1479.

Jacopo de’ Pazzi (1423-1478)

Il cadavere di Jacopo de’ Pazzi (Italian: “The corpse of Jacopo de’ Pazzi”), an 1864 oil painting by Odoardo Borrani that depicts Florentine citizens defiling Jacopo’s corpse in the wake of the Pazzi conspiracy.

Jacopo de’ Pazzi was a Florentine banker who became head of the Pazzi family in 1464. A rival to the Medici family, the Pazzi were nonetheless a powerful and influential Florentine noble family, and in 1478, Jacopo, along with other Pazzi members and sympathisers and with the support of Pope Sixtus IV, organised the Pazzi conspiracy, an assassination attempt against the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici with the goal of usurping the Medici’s de facto rule over the Republic of Florence. Lorenzo survived the attack, and the attempt failed.

After the attack on the Medici, Jacopo ran through the streets of Florence with one hundred armed Pazzi supporters, shouting “liberty”. After Francesco was hanged, however, Jacopo fled Florence for the nearby village of Castagno, but he was soon recognised and returned to Florence, where he was tortured and hanged next to the partially-decomposed corpse of fellow conspirator Francesco Salviati. He was buried at the Basilica di Santa Croce, but his corpse was exhumed by Florentine citizens and dragged to the Palazzo Pazzi, where it was displayed briefly before being thrown into the river Arno, then pulled from the river and flogged by a group of children, then thrown back into the Arno. Jesus Christ.

In the game
In the game, Jacopo is the head of the Pazzi and a participant in the Pazzi conspiracy. Rather than being hanged for his part in the attack, however, Jacopo is killed by Rodrigo Borgia in 1480 as punishment for his failure to eliminate Lorenzo de’ Medici. Although the real Jacopo would only have been 54 or 55 years old at the time of his death, Assassin’s Creed 2 depicts him as a very old and frail man.

Francesco de’ Pazzi (1444-1478)

Francesco de’ Pazzi was a Florentine banker and nobleman known primarily for his involvement in the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy, a failed attempt by the Pazzi clan to seize control of the Florentine government by murdering key members of the ruling Medici family. During the attack, Francesco murdered Giuliano de’ Medici by stabbing him in the head nineteen times. After the conspiracy’s failure, Francesco was executed alongside his uncles Jacopo and Renato de’ Pazzi.

In the game
Francesco is mentioned several times throughout the game’s opening act, when he is accused of murdering Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan in 1476 and is arrested. After Giovanni Auditore - Ezio’s father and Francesco’s accuser - is betrayed and executed, Francesco is acquitted of the murder and released due to lack of evidence. Francesco himself first appears in San Gimignano in 1478, when Ezio eavesdrops on his meeting with other Pazzi clan members and Rodrigo Borgia. After killing Vieri de’ Pazzi (Francesco’s fictional son), Ezio eavesdrops on another meeting between the conspirators in the catacombs of the Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Ezio and Lorenzo fight off Francesco and a group of Pazzi soldiers during the Pazzi conspiracy in 1478, although Francesco escapes to attack the Palazzo Vecchio, where he is later killed by Ezio and his corpse is hanged from the ramparts of the Palazzo.

Giovanni Giocondo (c. 1433-1515)

An unattributed portrait of Giocondo from the 1500s.

Giovanni Giocondo was a Veronese friar and scholar. He was also an architect whose designs include the Santa Maria della Scala (from Italian: “Saint Mary of the Staircase”) in Rome, the Pont Notre-Dame (from French: “Notre-Dame Bridge”) in Paris, France, the Château de Gaillon (from French: “Gaillon Castle”) in Gaillon, France, and the Fontego dei Tedeschi (from Venetian: “Fontego of the Germans”) in Venice. He designed the Pont Notre-Dame whilst working in France as an advisor to King Louis XII.

In the game
Giocondo doesn’t appear in Assassin’s Creed 2, but a letter written by him and addressed to Francesco de’ Pazzi suggests that he was employed by the Pazzi family around 1478 in the game’s universe.

Giuliano de’ Medici (1453-1478)

A portrait of Giuliano de’ Medici by Sandro Botticelli, painted between 1478 and 1480.

The second son of Lucrezia Tornabuoni and Piero de’ Medici ‘the Gouty’, Giuliano de’ Medici was the younger brother of Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’. Giuliano is best known for his death at the hands of Francesco de’ Pazzi in April 1478 as the opening stroke of the Pazzi conspiracy. Giuliano was slashed across the face and stabbed repeatedly during Mass at the Santa Maria del Fiore, and died in the cathedral. Giuliano was buried at the Basilica di San Lorenzo several days after his death, and was moved to a different crypt in the Medici Chapel of the San Lorenzo alongside his brother after Lorenzo’s death. One month after his death, Giuliano’s lover, Fioretta Gorini, gave birth to his son, Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici. Giulio was adopted by his uncle, Lorenzo, and, at the age of 45 years, became Pope Clement VII.

In the game
Giuliano makes only one appearance in Assassin’s Creed 2, during the Pazzi conspiracy, in which he is brutally killed by Francesco de’ Pazzi. The two women attending the Duomo with Giuliano are not identified in the game, and Giuliano was unmarried at the time of his death.

Pazzi conspiracy, 1478

The Pazzi conspiracy was an attempt by members of the Pazzi and Salviati clans to assassinate the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici and overthrow the Medici government. Tacitly supported by Pope Sixtus IV, the attempt took place on April 26, 1478 during mass at the packed Duomo di Firenze (Italian: “Florence Cathedral”). Giuliano (depicted here in a portrait painted by Agnolo di Cosimo c. 1503-1572) was stabbed 19 times and slashed across the head with a sword by Bernardo Bandini dei Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi, and died in the cathedral. Lorenzo, who seriously wounded by Antonio Maffei and Stefano da Bagnone, escaped and was locked in the cathedral’s sacristy by Agnolo ‘Poliziano’ Ambrogini, a tutor in the service of the Medici. Lorenzo survived his wounds and later recovered.

Meanwhile, a coordinated attack took place on the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the Medici’s power. The attack, led by Francesco Salviati, was intended to capture the Gonfaloniere and Signoria and seize power, but Salviati and his mercenaries were trapped in a room of the Palazzo with a hidden latch and Salviati was lynched by a mob within an hour.

The death of Salviati, who was a nephew and protégé of Pope Sixtus IV, is considered a key contributor to the several years of conflict between Florence and the Papal States that followed. Lorenzo himself entreated the crowd not to lynch the conspirators without a trial, though many of the conspirators were hanged regardless. Eighty people were executed by mobs in Florence between the date of the attack on April 26 and October 20. Bandini dei Baroncelli escaped to Constantinople, where he was arrested by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, who had him returned to Florence, where he was hanged more than a year after the attack on December 29, 1479 (depicted here in a 1479 drawing by Leonardo da Vinci).

After the partial failure of the attempt, Jacopo de’ Pazzi escaped Florence, only to be captured and brought back to the city, tortured, and hanged from the Palazzo Vecchio. Jacopo’s remains were buried at the Basilica di Santa Croce, but were exhumed and defiled by a Florentine mob. The Pazzi clan were banished from Florence and those with the name ‘Pazzi’ were forced to change their names. The Pazzi name was removed from all public documents and citizens married to anyone called Pazzi were barred from public office. Buildings and streets named after the Pazzi were renamed. The Pazzi were only allowed to return to Florence almost twenty years later in 1494, when the Medici family was finally overthrown by Charles VIII of France.

Following the attack, Sixtus IV interdicted Florence, making it illegal under Catholic law to conduct mass or communion in response to the execution of his nephew Salviati. Sixtus prepared to attack Florence alongside King Ferdinand I of Naples, but Lorenzo’s diplomacy swayed Ferdinand to seek peace between Florence and the papacy. The attack bolstered the Medici’s power by prompting their supporters to favour the idea of increased concentration of power for the Medici and giving Lorenzo an opportunity to demonstrate his political and diplomatic prowess.

In the game
The Pazzi conspiracy is depicted similarly to the historical event, with several exceptions. Unlike the real attack, which occurred inside the Cathedral, the Medici are instead attacked on the street outside. Giuliano is accurately depicted as dying after being repeatedly stabbed by Francesco de’ Pazzi, but Lorenzo is shown to escape the cathedral entirely after he and Ezio fight off Francesco and a group of armed Pazzi soldiers. Rather than hiding Lorenzo in the cathedral’s sacristy, Poliziano, who isn’t present during the attack in-game, instead appears after Ezio and Lorenzo escape to the Palazzo Medici, where he ushers Lorenzo into the courtyard and tends to his wounds.

The attack on the Palazzo Vecchio is also depicted, although it is led by Francesco de’ Pazzi rather than Francesco Salviati. The Pazzi conspirators are also not trapped in the palazzo, but are instead routed in battle by Medici supporters as Ezio kills Francesco de’ Pazzi. Francesco de’ Pazzi’s corpse is hung from the Palazzo Vecchio before a large crowd of Pazzi supporters, prompting a horrified Jacopo to flee the city. Jacopo’s fate is also changed: rather than being hunted down, tortured, and executed, he evades capture entirely, surviving until 1480, when he is killed by Rodrigo Borgia during a secret meeting at a Roman amphitheatre outside the Tuscan city of San Gimignano. Bandini dei Baroncelli’s fate is also altered – unlike his historical counterpart, the game’s Baroncelli also evades capture and is killed in San Gimignano in May 1479 by Ezio.

After the Pazzi conspiracy takes place in the game, all of the guards in Florence wear the orange of the Medici, except those guarding Templar banks, who wear Pazzi red.

Agnolo ‘Poliziano’ Ambrogini (1454-1494)

Detail from a fresco painted in the Sassetti Chapel of the Basilica di Santa Trinita in Florence that depicts Ambrogini with one of Lorenzo’s young sons.

Born in the Tuscan town of Montepulciano, Agnolo Ambrogini was a prominent classical scholar and poet usually known by his nickname, “Poliziano”, which comes from the Latin name for his hometown - Mons Politianus. Ambrogini’s translation of the Iliad into Latin hexameters brought him to the attention of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the de facto ruler of the Republic of Florence. Lorenzo employed Ambrogini as a tutor to his children, including Piero - who would later be known as “the Unfortunate” for his disastrous rulership of Florence’s in the wake of his father’s death - and Giovanni, who would, later in life, become Pope Leo X. Ambrogini’s humanist philosophy often saw him at odds with Clarice Orsini, the mother of the children and Lorenzo’s wife.

During the Pazzi conspiracy of April 1478, Amrogini saved Lorenzo’s life by hiding him in the sacristy of the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore. His ties to the Medici family grew very strong, even before this incident, and once Piero reached adulthood, he directly suggested to Pope Alexander VI that Ambrogini should be made a cardinal of the Catholic Church. Later in life, Ambrogini would also act as a political advisor to the family. His death in 1494 at the age of 40 was determined after a 2007 forensic examination of his exhumed corpse to have likely been of arsenic poisoning, and historians agree that the most likely killer was Piero “the Unfortunate” himself.

In the game
Ambrogini makes a very brief appearance in Assassin’s Creed 2. During the Pazzi conspiracy, he is not actually present at the Duomo, instead letting Lorenzo and Ezio into the Palazzo Medici after the pair have escaped from the Pazzi. Ambrogini looks very similar to other Medici soldiers, dressed in orange fabrics and armour, and is only identifiable by Lorenzo calling him “Poliziano” and the game’s relevant database entry being unlocked after this encounter.

Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli (1420-1479)

A 1479 sketch by Leonardo depicting the hanging of Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli. The handwritten notes describe the colours of the robes that Baroncelli was wearing at the time of his execution.

Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli was a Florentine merchant and one of the instigators of the Pazzi conspiracy. Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi initiated the conspiracy by attacking the Medici brothers at the Duomo di Firenze, and in the wake of the failed coup, Baroncelli fled to the city of Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire (today Istanbul, Turkey). He was quickly arrested in Constantinople and delivered back to Florence, where he was hanged on December 29.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Baroncelli is a banker for the Pazzi and a Templar agent who despises the Medici family for exiling his cousins from Florence. Baroncelli is present at the secret meeting beneath Santa Maria Novella, and he supplies weapons to the conspirators. During the attack, Baroncelli stabs Giuliano de’ Medici once, then flees. Rather than fleeing to Constantinople, the game’s Baroncelli instead escapes to the Tuscan town of San Gimignano, where he is tracked down and killed by Ezio.

Francesco Salviati Riario (1443-1478)

Bishop Francesco Salviati, an uncredited painting from the 1470s depicting Salviati.

Francesco Salviati Riario was a clergyman who served as the archbishop of Pisa in 1474. Related by blood or marriage to several powerful noble families including the Riario, Salviati, Pazzi, and Medici families, Salviati opted to enter the Catholic Church after the death of his father, believing that he would otherwise struggle to attain any power. Salviati acquired the appointment of Pisan archbishop by ingratiating himself with Francesco della Rovere, who would later become Pope Sixtus IV. The Florentine Medici family was opposed to Salviati’s appointment, which is believed to be Salviati’s motive for taking part in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478. During the attack, Salviati was tasked with assassinating the Gonfaloniere and taking control of the Palazzo della Signoria, but within an hour of arriving he was arrested and lynched by a Florentine mob. The death of Salviati is considered to have been a major reason for the interdict that Sixtus IV placed on the Republic of Florence and the ensuing conflict between the Republic and the Papal States.

In the game
In the game, Salviati is a Templar agent who has a similar role in the Pazzi conspiracy to his historical counterpart. In the wake of the attack’s failure, however, Salviati is not lynched in Florence, but instead switches his clothing with a farmer, who is hanged in his place. Ezio deduces that Salviati has escaped the city, and tracks him to his villa in the Tuscan countryside, where he and Mario Auditore’s forces infiltrate the villa and assassinate Salviati, who reveals to Ezio the location of a clandestine Templar meeting as he dies.

Stefano da Bagnone (1418-1478)

Stefano da Bagnone was a clergyman who worked as chaplain to Jacopo de’ Pazzi. An idealist republican, Stefano’s hatred for Lorenzo de’ Medici stemmed from Lorenzo’s subversion of Florence’s democratic system of government for personal power. During the Pazzi conspiracy, Stefano and fellow clergyman Antonio Maffei were tasked with killing Lorenzo, whilst Baroncelli and Francesco de’ Pazzi killed Giuliano. Lorenzo was wounded, but survived the attack, and Stefano was lynched by pro-Medici mobs within the week after having his nose and ears cut off.

In the game
Stefano is a Templar agent and meets with the other Pazzi conspirators beneath the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella. He stabs Lorenzo across the back during the conspiracy and flees before Ezio can kill him. Ezio tracks Stefano to the Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, a monastery in the Tuscan countryside, and assassinates him.

Antonio Maffei da Volterra (1450-1478)

Coat of arms of the Maffei family.

Antonio Maffei da Volterra was a Volterrani noble and clergyman known mostly for his participation in the 1478 Pazzi conspiracy, in which he was to assist Stefano da Bagnone in killing Lorenzo de’ Medici. The attempt failed, and Maffei was quickly lynched alongside other conspirators.

In the game
In the game, Maffei escapes Florence and travels to San Gimignano, where he seems to suffer a mental breakdown brought on by paranoia. He rants from the roof of the Torre del Diavolo until he is assassinated by Ezio.

Apennine Mountains

The Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi (Italian: “National Park of the Casentinesi Forests”), a national park situated in the Apennines, roughly between the Tuscany and Romagna regions, photographed in February 2006 by by Hagen Hofmann.

The Apennine Mountains are a mountain range that follows the length of the Italian Peninsula. The range begins in the Ligurian Alps in northern Italy, and continues to the coastal city of Reggio di Calabria, though the mountains of the island of Sicily are sometimes considered a part of the Apennine range. The Apennines are such a prominent feature of the peninsula’s geography that it is sometimes referred to as the ‘Apennine Peninsula’.

In the game
A location referred to simply as ‘The Mountains’ appears in Assassin’s Creed 2, situated between Florence and Forlì. This small location is intended to represent the Apennine range, and it appears only in a brief section of the story in which Ezio and Leonardo travel together by carriage on the way to Venice. The two are soon pursued on horseback by agents of Rodrigo Borgia, and Ezio evades them with the carriage. ‘The Mountains’ can be revisited at any time after this mission, but only collectibles are available, and it is not otherwise relevant to the plot.

Leonardo’s flying machine

Leonardo da Vinci’s design for a personal flying machine is one of his most well-known designs. In his lifetime, Leonardo was fascinated by the prospect of human flight, and this design is largely inspired by his extensive observation and dissection of birds. Leonardo’s design is for what is now referred to as an ‘ornithopter’ - a flying machine with wings that ‘flap’ like a bird’s. It would have been controlled by a single pilot, who would have laid face-down on a board in the centre of the machine. The pilot would have controlled the ‘flapping’ of the wings with a pair of cranks controlled by both the hands and feet, and used a device controlled by the head for steering.

Leonardo constructed the machine and, in the early 1500s, a friend of his, Tommaso Masini, tested it, launching himself and the device from Monte Ceceri, a Tuscan mountain near Fiesole. Masini could not adequately power the device with the provided cranks, but it did manage to glide for around one kilometre before it crashed, leaving Masini with a broken leg. Leonardo recorded this test in his ‘Codex on the Flight of Birds’

In the game
A device based on Leonardo’s flying machine appears several times in Assassin’s Creed 2, first in Leonardo’s carriage as he crosses the Apennines, and again in his workshop is Venice. Ezio tests the machine in the Rialto sestiere in the hopes of using it to infiltrate the heavily-guarded Palazzo Ducale, and the thieves’ guild lights bonfires in order to generate lift for the device. Ezio successfully enters the palace, but the machine is destroyed by a burning arrow after landing and crashes in the lagoon. Similar devices appear in later entries in the series, including Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood and Assassin’s Creed 3.

Forlì

Modern-day coat of arms of the city of Forlì, including the Hohenstaufen eagle granted by Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor.

Founded in the territory of the Roman Empire, Forlì was a part of the succeeding Byzantine Empire’s Italian territory - the Exarchate of Ravenna - from the late 500s to 751, and it was incorporated into the Papal States with their creation in 757. In the 800s Forlì became a self-governing city-state, and in 889 it became a republic.

Allied with the Holy Roman Empire’s Ghibelline faction, Forlì supported the Empire in its long conflicts against the Pope - an alliance which earned it the distinctive eagle of the Hohenstaufen dynasty on its coat of arms, which remains a feature to this day. As the Holy Roman Empire became less able to maintain its struggle against the papacy, Forlì conceded itself to a string of unrelated condottieri, who failed to establish a continuing hereditary lineage until the House of Ordelaffi came to power in 1302.

The rule of the Ordelaffi dynasty was turbulent, and the family struggled to maintain its power in the face of civil war and several temporary usurpations until the death of Pino III Ordelaffi in 1480. Pino is suspected to have been poisoned, and Pope Sixtus IV granted Forlì to his nephew, Pazzi conspirator Girolamo Riario. Riario’s wife, Caterina Sforza, ruled as regent for her son, Ottaviano Riario, and became known as the indomitable ‘Lady of Forlì’.Renowned condottiero Cesare Borgia - the son of Sixtus’ successor, Alexander VI, took Forlì in 1499, and from the time of Cesare’s death the city was virtually administered directly by the papacy.

A 1500s portrait of Cesare Borgia, who brought Forlì under the rule of the Papal States.

Forlì would later face turmoil during the French Revolution, contribute significantly to the war effort in the First World War, and be closely controlled by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini shortly before the Second World War. This war devastated the city, destroying numerous significant historic structures. Forlì’s economy quickly recovered after the war, and today it has prosperous agricultural and industrial sectors, predominantly manufacturing textiles. Like the rest of the Italian Peninsula, Forlì is administered by the Italian Republic, and it is the capital of the Forlì-Cesena province, in the Emilia-Romagna administrative regions.

In the game
Forlì is a major location in Assassin’s Creed 2. It first appears after Ezio and Leonardo cross the Apennine Mountains to leave Tuscany, when the pair take a ferry from a nearby Venetian outpost to Venice. Forlì’s regent, Caterina Sforza, appears as a major character throughout the game, and Ezio later returns to the city-state to assist her after her children are abducted by Templars. Unlike the real Forlì, the game’s version is depicted as a seaside town, whilst the real location is around 20 kilometres from the Adriatic Sea.

Landmarks of Forlì

Piazza Maggiore

The Piazza Aurelio Saffi, with the Palazzo Comunale and the statue of Saffi visible, photographed in May 2010 from the Abbazia di San Mercuriale.

The Piazza Maggiore (Italian: “Greater Plaza”) is a plaza in Forlì. Originally a field known as Campo dell’Abate (Italian: “Abbott’s Field”), the Maggiore houses significant historical buildings including the Palazzo Comunale and the Abbazia di San Mercuriale. In the 1800s the plaza was briefly renamed after Vittorio Emanuele II, King of Italy, until 1921, when it was again renamed to the Piazza Aurelio Saffi after Marco Aurelio Saffi, a politician of the short-lived 1849 Roman Republic. A statue of Saffi exists on the Piazza to this day, and the name has also stuck.

In the game
The Piazza doesn’t have a database entry in Assassin’s Creed 2, and isn’t treated like a landmark itself, but it still houses the Palazzo Comunale and the San Mercuriale in the game’s version of Forlì.

Abbazia di San Mercuriale

The Abbazia di San Mercuriale, photographed in May 2018 from the Piazza Aurelio Saffi.

The Abbazia di San Mercuriale (Italian: “Abbey of Saint Mercurialis”) is the main church in Forlì, having been completed in 1180 along with its bell tower on the site of a church built in the 300s that was destroyed in an 1173 fire. The abbey is located on what is now known as the Piazza Aurelio Saffi (Italian: “Aurelio Saffi Plaza”), opposite the Palazzo Comunale di Forlì (Italian: “Forlì Municipal Palace”). San Mercuriale’s 75-metre bell tower is one of the largest on the Italian Peninsula, and was considered a great cultural icon in the 1200s.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Ezio travels to the Abbazia di San Mercuriale in ♥♥♥♥ and learns the identity of Girolamo Savonarola from one of its monks. The abbey also houses a hidden glyph.

Palazzo Comunale di Forlì

The Palazzo Comunale photographed in July 2013.

The Palazzo Comunale di Forlì (Italian: “Forlì Municipal Palace”) is Forlì’s town hall, and the residence of Forlì’s medieval governments. Built around an existing tower in 1000, the Palazzo was purchased in 1412 by the Ordelaffi family, who ruled Forlì for the better part of several centuries.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Forlì is ruled by Caterina Sforza, who hosts Ezio at the Palazzo Comunale after he is injured by Checco Orsi.

Rocca di Ravaldino / Rocca di Caterina Sforza

The Rocca di Ravaldino, photographed in September 2010.

The Rocca di Ravaldino (Italian: “Ravaldino Fortress”) or Rocca di Caterina Sforza (Italian: “Fortress of Caterina Sforza”) is a citadel built on top of an earlier fortress which was largely destroyed by 1423. Parts of this earlier, ruined fortress are incorporated into the current Rocca, which was built in 1471 by Giorgio Marchesi Fiorentino under Pino III Ordelaffi, Lord of Forlì. After Pino’s death by poisoning, Forlìvesi regent Caterina Sforza made only minor modifications, and the Ordelaffi changes were more or less the final major changes made to this day.

In the game
In the game, the Rocca di Ravaldino is used by Caterina Sforza as a stronghold during an attack by Templar forces. It is also the location of the tomb of fictional Assassin Qulan Gal, and the location of his associated Assassin seal.

Caterina Sforza (1463-1509)

La dama dei gelsomini (Italian: “The Lady of Jasmine”) by Lorenzo di Credi, a portrait believed to be of Caterina Sforza, painted c. 1481.

Caterina Sforza was a Milanese noblewoman born out of wedlock to Lucrezia Landriani and Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan. Caterina grew up in her father’s Milanese court, where she developed a forceful and warlike personality that she is renowned for to this day. In 1473, at the age of 10, she was betrothed to Girolamo Riario, the cousin of Pope Sixtus IV. Riario was made Lord of Imola by the Pope in 1473 and Lord of Forlì in 1480, and Caterina lived with him in Rome from 1477 to 1484.

After the death of Sixtus in 1484, his supporters had their residences looted, and riots broke out across Rome. As the Riario residence was stripped by looters, a heavily pregnant Caterina entered Vatican City on horseback and took control of the Castel Sant’Angelo (Italian: “Castle of the Holy Angel”) with a force of loyal soldiers. Caterina’s occupation made the Church’s cardinals hesitant to enter the Vatican and elect a new pope, and she refused to relinquish control of the Sant’Angelo unless it was to a new Pope sympathetic to the Riario family’s interests. Meanwhile, Riario was bribed by the Church to abandon Caterina’s cause, and she surrendered after her husband brought an army against her. After Caterina and her children left Rome for Forlì, Giovanni Battisti Cybo, an opponent of the Riario family, was elected Pope Innocent VIII.

In the absence of its lord and lady, Forlì had been administered by Ludovico Maria Sforza, Caterina’s uncle. In Forlì, Riario became very unpopular for levying excessive taxes against the populace after the government began to run out of money. Conspiracies amongst Riario’s enemies planned to usurp him, and in April ♥♥♥♥, a conspiracy by the Orsi - a noble Forlivesi family - saw Riario finally killed, and Caterina and her children imprisoned. The castellan of the crucial Rocca di Ravaldino, still loyal to the Riario family, refused to relinquish the fortress, and Caterina convinced her captors to allow her to negotiate with him. Upon entering the Rocca, Caterina instead unleashed a slew of threats and vulgarities on the Orsi, stating that she did not care if her children were killed, as she was pregnant with another heir of Riario’s. The Orsi did not harm Caterina’s children, and she was able to defeat the attempted coup with the help of Ludovico.

Coat of arms of the Riario family.

Immediately after defeating the Orsi, Caterina began to rule Imola and Forlì as regent for the new Lord of Forlì, her eldest son, Ottaviano Riario. She exacted revenge for Riario’s death, imprisoning all the Orsi conspirators, their families, and anyone associated with the plot. During this period, Caterina secretly married Giacomo Feo (the brother of the Rocca’s loyal castellan). Ruling as a meticulous, strong leader, Caterina directly involved herself in the training of her soldiers, and closely controlled the finances of her territories. During Caterina’s regency, the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici damaged stability on the Italian Peninsula, but the election of Rodrigo Borgia - a close friend to the family during their time in Rome - as Pope Alexander VI strengthened her control over her territory.

In spite of this, tension between the Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples saw Charles VIII, King of France, claim Naples for himself and bring a force onto the Peninsula, instigating the First Italian War. Forlì’s important position gave Caterina great control over the passage of armies through the Romagna region, and she struggled to remain neutral as her uncle Ludovico sided with Charles and the Pope took up arms against him. Caterina eventually sided with the papal forces, but was quickly betrayed by her allies in Naples, who did not come to Forlì’s aid in its first confrontation with French troops. In response, Caterina sided with Charles, who quickly conquered Naples, but was just as quickly ousted by a group of Italian principalities who formed the League of Venice to remove him.

Over time, Forlì became increasingly subjected to the growing power of Caterina’s secret husband, Giacomo Feo. Concerns grew among the nobility that the cruel Giacomo would usurp Ottaviano’s claim to the lordship, and several failed plots were conducted to assassinate both he and Caterina. A plot in August 1495 saw Giacomo assassinated on a hunting trip. This plot had involved virtually all Forlivesi nobles loyal to Ottaviano, and had been conducted under the assumption that Caterina’s power was being subverted by Giacomo, and that she would consent to the killing. However, a furious Caterina instead began massacring entire families of the conspirators, conducting cruel, torturous executions that permanently changed the way she was perceived by her citizenry.

In 1497, Caterina was secretly married to Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, the Florentine ambassador to Forlì, and a relative to the former rulers of Florence, with whom she had her final child. During this period, tensions were increasing between the Republics of Florence and Venice, and Forlì’s crucial location once again put Caterina at a crucial point in the conflict. Caterina sided with her husband’s native Florence. After Giovanni’s sudden death in 1498, Caterina was able to barely fend off a vicious and severely destructive attack by a Venetian force. Several skirmishes took place between the two powers, but the Venetians eventually skipped Forlì altogether, using another route to reach Florence. Caterina’s defence against the Venetians earned her the nickname ‘La Tigre’ (Italian: ‘The Tiger’).

Gardens of the Villa di Castello, where Caterina spent the final years of her life, photographed in July 2013.

In March 1499, as part of an effort to assist Louis XII, King of France in his conquest of Naples and Milan, Alexander VI invalidated the lordships of many feudal states, including Caterina’s regency over Forlì. As the now-hostile forces of the papacy approached, Caterina hurried to prepare Forlì’s defence, and was left to face the invading force without the aid of Florence. When condottiero Cesare Borgia, the pope’s son, reached Imola in December, its residents allowed him to enter. Witnessing this, Caterina released Forlì’s citizens from their responsibility to defend the city, and sealed herself inside the Rocca di Ravaldino. When Cesare arrived, his forces sacked Forlì, but Caterina remained sealed in the fortress, refusing all offers to negotiate. After nearly a month of bombardment and staunch resistance, the papal forces finally entered the Ravaldino, where Caterina continued to fight the invaders herself until she was subdued. She surrendered herself to the French army, but was soon handed over to Cesare Borgia.

Cesare returned with her to Rome, where she was imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo after an escape attempt. Caterina remained a prisoner of the pope until June 1501, when the French general who had handed her to Cesare had her released. Caterina travelled to Florence, where she lived out the rest of her life on the properties of her late husband, Giovanni until her death of pneumonia in May 1509

In the game
Caterina is a major character in Assassin’s Creed 2, and the ♥♥♥♥ attempted coup is a significant side plot at the end of the game, in which Ezio helps Caterina rescue her children from the Orsi.

Girolamo Riario (1443-♥♥♥♥)

Heraldry of Girolamo Riario’s family, the House of Riario (sometimes referred to as the House of Riario-Sforza).

Girolamo Riario was a Savonesi nobleman, the son of Bianca della Rovere and Paolo Riario. Riario’s maternal uncle, Francesca della Rovere, was elected Pope Sixtus IV in 1471, and made Riario Lord of Imola in 1473 as a dowry for his wedding to Milanese noblewoman Caterina Sforza. Riario was involved in the failed 1478 Pazzi conspiracy, which was conducted with the support of Sixtus IV, who had planned to end the Republic of Florence and install Riario as the first Lord of Florence.

Riario’s power grew rapidly thanks to his close association with the Pope, and Sixtus granted Riario the lordship of Forlì in 1480 in order to strengthen papal control over the Romagna region. Riario’s family remained in Rome until Sixtus’ death in 1484, when Caterina Sforza forcibly took control of the Castel Sant’Angelo in order to sway the election of a new pope in a way that would benefit her husband. Riario took a bribe from the Church’s cardinals to have Sforza stand down, and after some resistance she was forced to do so, and the family left for Forlì.

By ♥♥♥♥, Riario’s levying of excessive taxes on the Forlivesi populace had made him hugely unpopular, and on April 14 of that year he was assassinated by a group of nine men and his corpse was thrown into the street. Whilst Riario had been unpopular, the Orsi family, who had orchestrated the assassination, didn’t receive the support of the Florentine Medici family that would have allowed them to usurp the lordship, and the populace of Forlì generally sided with Caterina Sforza, who ruled Forlì as a regent for her eldest son, Ottaviano Riario.

In the game
Riario doesn’t appear in Assassin’s Creed 2, but is mentioned several times, first by Leonardo da Vinci in 1480, who doesn’t use his name but identifies Caterina Sforza as his wife. In ♥♥♥♥, shortly after Riario’s historical and fictional death, Sforza mentions that she had hired the Orsi family to assassinate him after learning that he was secretly a Templar. Riario is stated to have produced a map of the locations of Altaïr’s codex pages, and the Orsi siege of Forlì is, in the game, a plot to steal this map. Despite a large section of the game being devoted to Ezio’s hunt for the Pazzi conspirators, Riario is not on this list, and is not even mentioned to have been involved in the attack.

Most Serene Republic of Venice, 697-1797

Banner of Saint Mark - the flag of the Republic of Venice.

Constructed on a group of 118 islands in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, the city of Venice is typically agreed to have been founded in the early centuries of the first millennium A.D. by refugees fleeing Germanic and Hun invasions of mainland Europe. The city’s early history is not well-documented, and it is traditionally considered to have been ‘founded’ in March 421 with the dedication of the church of San Giacomo on the Rialto islet, although settlements on these islets in the Venetian Lagoon certainly existed before this date. The city was part of the Eastern Roman Empire’s Exarchate of Ravenna until 697, when Venice is thought to have elected its first Doge and became the Most Serene Republic of Venice (Venetian: Serenìsima Repùblica Vèneta. The third Doge, Orso Ipato, supported Eastern Roman Emperor Leo III the Isaurian in a successful campaign to reclaim the Exarchate during a period of widespread revolt, and as a result the Empire granted the Republic of Venice various privileges and formally recognised Orso as Doge.

In 751, the republic was greatly expanded by the arrival of refugees fleeing the Lombard conquest of the Italian Peninsula. From the 900s to the 1200s, Venice developed comparably to other Italian city-states, and the Venetian Lagoon’s powerful strategic position at the northernmost point of the Adriatic Sea and the Republic’s powerful navy allowed it to develop into a crucial economic centre for western Europe, with relatively easy travel between Europe and parts of Asia. By 1200, the Republic had claimed various parts of the west coast of the Balkan Peninsula to prevent pirates from establishing themselves, to maintain a ‘buffer’ between Venice and neighbouring states, and to protect the crucial imports of wheat from the mainland. Venice exerted naval power over much of the Aegean Sea, and its continued loyalty to the Eastern Roman Empire saw it granted significant trade benefits in that region in exchange for supporting the Empire militarily.

The Horses of Saint Mark, a set of ancient Greek sculptures taken from Constantinopple during the Fourth Crusade and displayed on the Piazzetta San Marco.

With the Sack of Constantinople (the Eastern Roman Empire’s capital city) during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, the Eastern Roman Empire was well and truly in decline, and Venice saw a great influx of wealth from the looting, epitomised in the majestic Cavalli di San Marco (Italian: “Horses of Saint Mark”), equine statues taken from the Hippodrome of Constantinople which were displayed over the entrance to the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco (Italian: “Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark”). With the Empire crippled and its power diminished, Venetian interests created the Duchy of the Archipelago, a state comprising islands in the Aegean Sea that were in a key location that allowed Venice to exert more of its power over the Mediterranean Sea than before. By the late 1200s Venice dominated Mediterranean trade with thousands of ships, and the city’s wealth saw de facto contests between the nobility to be patrons for the finest arts, and to construct the finest architecture in the city.

The slow decline of the Republic of Venice began in the 1420s, when Venetian forces failed to hold the city of Thessaloniki (in the modern-day Hellenic Republic) against an Ottoman siege. This siege was the beginning of a string of wars between the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Venice, which would see the Republic gradually lose territory and control over large parts of the Aegean. The 1499 discovery of a naval route around the Cape of Good Hope to India by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama ended Venice’s monopoly on European trade with Asia, and Venice’s oared ships left the Republic struggling to navigate the open oceans as other European states rushed to create prosperous colonies. The second outbreak of the Black Death in Venice killed 50,000 people between 1575 and 1577, whilst the Italian Plague of 1629-1631 killed a similar amount - one third of the city’s population of 150,000. The Kingdom of Portugal’s naval influence grew with its colonisation of South America, and it quickly became the principal provider of trade between Europe and Asia, crippling Venice’s prospects.

The Republic was conquered by French military leader Napoleon Bonaparte in May 1797 during the War of the First Coalition, ending the Republic’s 1,100-year existence. Bonaparte was viewed as a liberator by many in Venice, as his opening of the Venetian Ghetto allowed the city’s persecuted Jewish population to live and travel freely. Venice was given to the Habsburg Monarchy in 1797, and it controlled the city from early 1798 to 1805, when Bonaparte incorporated it into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, of which he was Napoleon I, King of Italy. Napoleon’s defeat in 1814 saw Austrian rule return, and the city being incorporated into the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, during which time an 1848 revolt saw the creation of the Republic of San Marco, which was crushed in 1849. In 1866, during the Italian unification, Venice became part of the Kingdom of Italy, and its historical architecture was virtually free of damage from the bombings of the Second World War. In 1946, an institutional referendum created the Italian Republic as it exists today, and Venice has existed as a part of this state ever since.

In the game
The city of Venice is one of the major locations of Assassin’s Creed 2. Ezio arrives here in 1481 after learning from a letter penned by Jacopo de’ Pazzi that Templars operate in the city.

Landmarks of Venice, 1/5

Grand Canal

Venice from above, demonstrating the length and width of the reverse S-shaped Grand canal, photographed by Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz in July 2017.

The Grand Canal is a 3.8 kilometre-long channel in the Venetian Lagoon that divides the city of Venice. The canal is believed to follow the course of an ancient branch of the river Brenta, and the prosperity of fishing settlements along the Canal under the Roman and Byzantine Empires led to Venice’s development as a major city and state.

The canal is crossed by only four bridges: the Ponte di Rialto, Ponte dell’Accademia (Italian: “Academy Bridge”), the Ponte degli Scalzi, and the Ponte della Costituzione (Italian: “Constitution Bridge”) or Ponte di Calatrava (Italian: “Calatrava Bridge”), and the city went centuries with only the Rialto as an available crossing.

In the game
The Grand Canal appears in some capacity in most of Assassin’s Creed 2’s Venice-set missions. Ezio arrives in Venice via the Canal, and it is later the location of Marco Barbarigo’s ship when he is killed on board by Ezio.

Ponte di Rialto

The current Rialto, photographed in November 2017.

The Ponte di Rialto (Italian: “Rialto Bridge”) or Ponte de Rialto (Venetian) is the oldest bridge to cross the Grand Canal in Venice, connecting the San Marco and San Polo sestieri (a type of district in Italian towns and cities that are divided into six districts). The original bridge was a pontoon bridge built in 1181 and known as Ponte della Moneta (Italian: “Bridge of the Coin”) due to its proximity to a nearby mint. The Moneta was replaced in 1255 by a timber bridge which could be partially raised to allow vessels to pass beneath it. Rows of shops were built along the bridge in the early 1400s, and their rent helped pay for the bridge’s maintenance. During this period, the bridge was renamed after the Rialto market that expanded around it.

The wooden Rialto was partially destroyed in a 1310 riot, collapsing entirely in 1444 and, after being repaired, again in 1524. Construction on a stone bridge to replace the wooden one took place between 1588 and 1591 under Venetian architect Antonio da Ponte. Da Ponte’s bridge was designed similarly to the previous wooden one, with rows of shops and a sloped structure that allowed ships to pass underneath. The stone design has survived to the present day, and it is one of Venice’s most significant tourist attractions.

In the game
Ezio and Leonardo arrive in Venice in 1481, and the wooden Rialto is the first landmark that they encounter. Ezio later tails and eavesdrops on a group of Templar conspirators, who disperse at the Rialto having walked there from the Piazza di San Marco. The Rialto featured in-game is based on the wooden design, which, in this time period, would have been the final wooden design to exist in this location before its destruction and subsequent replacement by a stone bridge.

San Giacomo di Rialto

San Giacomo di Rialto, photographed by Didier Descouens in May 2010. The church’s 24-hour clock is famous for its inaccuracy, possessing only one hand. The Ponte di Rialto is partially visible to the right of this photograph.

San Giacomo di Rialto (Italian: “Church of Saint James of the Rialto”) is a Roman Catholic church in the San Polo sestiere of Venice. This church was named after another Venetian church, the Chiesa di San Giacomo dell’Orio in the Santa Croce sestiere. The dell’Orio is also known as the San Giacomo Apostolo (Italian: “Saint James the Apostle”) after one of the twelve disciples of Jesus Christ, but there is no general consensus on the origin of “dell’Orio”, with speculation that it could derive from a laurel plant (Italian: “lauro”) that once stood nearby, the existence of a dried-up swamp (Italian: “luprio”) on this location, or an alternate version of “del rio” (Italian: “of the river”).

San Giacomo di Rialto is traditionally considered to be the oldest church in Venice, alleged to have been consecrated in 421, though documentation mentioning the church can only be traced back to 1152. Called ‘di Rialto’ to indicate its proximity to the Ponte di Rialto, the presence of the church led to the establishment of the Rialto market in front of it. A 1502 fire destroyed much of the surrounding area, but the church was spared, and restorations in 1601 under Doge Marino Grimani saw the raising of pavement in the area to counter rising occasional citywide flooding that the Venetians call acqua alta (Italian: “high water”).

In the game
San Giacomo appears in Assassin’s Creed 2’s Venice, but serves no major role in the story. It is one of the first landmarks encountered in Venice, and is mentioned by Alvise whilst escorting Ezio and Leonardo through Venice as “the oldest church in Venice”, which is traditionally considered to be true.

Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari

The Frari, photographed in May 2017 by Didier Descouens. The Campo dei Frari is visible in the foreground and the Archivio di Stato to the right of the image.

The Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (Italian: “Basilica of Glorious Saint Mary of the Minor Orders”), often simply referred to as ‘the Frari’ is a major Roman Catholic church in the San Polo sestiere of Venice. The original church on this site was built between 1250 and 1338 on city land donated in 1231 by Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, but after its completion work very soon began on the current Basilica as a replacement. The church’s campanile was completed in 1396, and it was consecrated in May 1492 and given the name Santa Maria Gloriosa. The church is the resting place of several Doges, including Francesco Dandolo, Francesco Foscari, Nicolò Tron, and Giovanni Pesaro, as well as Tiziano Vecelli, a very prominent Venetian artist usually referred to as ‘Titian’.

In the game
In the main story, Rosa teaches Ezio the climb leap technique by having him scale the Frari, and it also appears in an optional mission in which Ezio must infiltrate a Templar lair in the Frari’s interior. In Anton Gill’s novelisation of Assassin’s Creed: Revelations (published under the pseudonym ‘Oliver Bowden’), it is stated that the Frari is the location of Ezio’s wedding to Ottoman-Venetian bookseller Sofia Sartor in 1512.

Landmarks of Venice, 2/5

Campo dei Frari

The Campo dei Frari, photographed in November 2016 by Didier Descouens.

The Campo dei Frari (Italian: “Field of the Minor Orders”) is a Venetian campo - an open public space surrounded by buildings - in the San Polo sestiere. The use of the campo on the Italian Peninsula was once widespread, but today most Italian cities and towns refer to spaces of this kind as piazza (Italian: “plaza”). In Venice, these spaces are still called campi, with only three exceptions. The Campo dei Frari is one of the most popular public squares in Venice due to the presence of the significant Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The only other historically significant building on the campo is the Archivio di Stato di Venezia (Italian: “State Archives of Venice”), an archive repurposed from a former Franciscan convent.

In the game
The Campo dei Frari appears in Assassin’s Creed 2, in front of the Santa Maria Gloriosa. It does not have a database entry, but it can be identified by its location relative to the Santa Maria Gloriosa.

Piazza San Marco and Piazzetta di San Marco

The Piazza San Marco from the western end, with the Basilica San Marco and Campanile di San Marco visible, photographed by Ingo Mehling in August 2003.

The Piazza San Marco (Italian: “Saint Mark’s Square”) or Piasa San Marco (Venetian), usually referred to in English as Saint Mark’s Square, is Venice’s most prominent public plaza. Situated in the San Marco sestiere, the plaza is full of historical buildings, including most prominently the Basilica San Marco, the Torre Dell’Orologio, and the Campanile di San Marco. As the largest open space in the city, the Piazza was and continues to be a popular meeting place for Venetians, and its proximity to the waterfront, which is accessible via the adjoining Piazzetta di San Marco (Italian: “Little Square of Saint Mark”), which is decorated with replicas of the Cavalli di San Marco (Italian: “Horses of Saint Mark”) on a pair of pillars, and provides access to the Palazzo Ducale (Italian: “Doge’s Palace”), which faces the water.

In the game
This area appears several times in Assassin’s Creed 2’s story, first in a sequence where Ezio tails a group of Templars from the Piazza to the Ponte di Rialto, then again when Ezio and Antonio scout the Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco for a way in. Later, Ezio talks with Rosa and Leonardo in the Piazzetta di San Marco about the Vault.

Torre dell’Oroglio

The Torre dell’Orologio photographed from the Piazza San Marco in May 2007 by Leandro Neumann Ciuffo.

The Torre dell’Orologio (Italian: “Clock Tower”), usually referred to as Saint Mark’s Clock Tower due to its location on the Piazza San Marco, is a tower in the Venetian sestiere of San Marco. The clock was commissioned to replace an ageing original in the plaza in 1493, and the location was chosen in 1495. The structure was inaugurated in February 1499, but by 1531, the clock had already stopped working, and the Council of Ten appointed a ‘keeper’ to live permanently in the tower to maintain the clock. In 1751, Venetian architect Giorgio Massari began a restoration of the tower, adding additional floors and eight new columns on the ground floor for structural integrity.

In the game
The Torre dell’Orologio was built between 1496 and 1497, and whilst Assassin’s Creed 2’s story concludes in 1499, none of the missions set in Venice canonically occur after the tower was completed (with the earliest occurring in 1481 and the latest in ♥♥♥♥, and its appearance doesn’t change throughout the course of the game. The roof of the tower, where a bell and a pair of sculptures stand today, is the location of one of the game’s glyphs.

Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco

The Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco, photographed from the Piazza San Marco in September 2017.

The Basilica Cattedrale Patriarcale di San Marco (Italian: “Patriarchal Cathedral Basilica of Saint Mark”), usually referred to in English as simply ‘Saint Mark’s Basilica’ is a Catholic cathedral in the San Marco sestiere, the most famous and prominent church in Venice, and the seat of the Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Venice. The basilica was built on the site of an existing church attached to the Palazzo Ducale to house ‘relics’ of the Catholic Saint Mark the Evangelist, purportedly his remains. The remains were, according to Venetian tradition, stolen from Abbasid Alexandria (in the modern-day Arab Republic of Egypt) in the 800s by Venetian merchants who smuggled them out of the city by obscuring them in a barrel of pork fat so that the guards (whose Islamic religion prohibited them from eating pork) would not check too closely. The remains came into possession of the Doge, who kept them hidden until his death, when his will ordered the construction of the basilica to house them.

It is universally accepted that the current San Marco is not the first, and that several iterations preceding it were destroyed. Construction of the current basilica is generally considered to have begun around 1063, and the date given for its consecration ranges from as early as 1084 to 1117, although it is likely that some of these dates actually represent the consecration of different parts of the basilica.

The basilica’s unique appearance comes from its mix of Venetian and Byzantine influences, and the general consensus is that the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque in Constantinople (now called Istanbul, in the Republic of Turkey) was the greatest influence on the basilica’s design. The opulence on display in the basilica’s grand scale and extravagant appearance saw it nicknamed Chiesa d’Oro (Italian: “Church of Gold”), and it is considered a powerful symbol of Venetian wealth and dominance.

In the game
The basilica’s interior is secretly home to the tomb of Amunet, a fictional character who, in the game’s universe, assassinated Cleopatra VIII Philopator, Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, using an asp. Amunet is a major character in the 2017 game Assassin’s Creed: Origins.

Landmarks of Venice, 3/5

Campanile di San Marco

The 1908 Campanile, photographed from off-shore by Orlando Paride in June 2020.

The Campanile di San Marco (Italian: “Bell Tower of Saint Mark”) was a free-standing tower on the Piazza San Marco, near the intersection with the Piazzetta San Marco. The tower was constructed in the 900s as a means for spotting far-off ships, and was part of an initiative begun under Doge Pietro Tribuno to protect Venice from naval attacks. Its construction suffered considerable delays, and despite the foundations having been laid under Doge Orso II Participazio (912-932), the tower is believed to have only reached a height at which it could be functionally used as a watchtower during the reign of Doge Tribuno Memmo (979-991).

The actual belfry was added during the Dogal tenure of Vitale II Michiel (1156-1172), a period which also saw the addition of a wood-framed spire which regularly needed repairs. The spire was damaged repeatedly by lightning and fire throughout the 1300s and 1400s, and a large crack appeared on the northern side after a 1511 earthquake, necessitating immediate repairs.

The tower was completely repaired by 1512, but it continued to be struck by lightning regularly throughout the 1500s and 1600s, requiring expensive repairs after each strike. A strike in April 1745 caused masonry to fall into the piazza and kill four bystanders, and in March 1776, physicist Giuseppe Toaldo installed Venice’s first lightning rod on the spire. In July 1902, the tower collapsed completely, killing the custodian’s cat. Donations from Victor Emmanuel II, King of Italy, as well as money from the communal and provincial Venetian governments were used to reconstruct the tower, with the intent of perfectly recreating its historical appearance. The new tower began construction in April 1906 and was completed in October 1908, and the spire was finished in March 1912. By 1914, cracks appeared on the new tower, and by 1995 it stood at a 7-centimetre lean. Restorations began in 2007 and were completed in 2013.

In the game
After Ezio learns of the Templar plot to assassinate Doge Mocenigo, he and Antonio scout the Palazzo Ducale from the base of tower. The game depicts the Loggetta del Sansovino (Italian: “Sansovino’s Loggetta”) at the foot of the tower, but construction on this structure only began in 1538, fifty years after the game’s final Venice-set missions. In addition, a glyph appears inside the upper level of the tower.

Palazzo Ducale

The southern façade of the Palazzo Ducale as viewed from the lagoon. The Torre dell’Orologio and one of the Horses of Saint Mark are visible to the left and the Ponte della Paglia (Italian: “Bridge of Straw”), an 1800s footbridge, is visible to the right. Photographed in June 2020 by Orlando Paride.

The Palazzo Ducale (Italian: “Doge’s Palace”) is a Venetian palace on the Piazzetta di San Marco, was the residence of the Doge for almost the entire duration of the Republic of Venice, and an important government building for the Republic’s various institutions.

The original Doge’s palace in the Rialto area was built from 810 under Doge Agnello Participazio, but was completely destroyed by fire in the 900s. Work on the current palace was begun in 1340, starting with the southern side (which faces the lagoon), and in 1424 work began on the side facing the Piazzetta. The canal side was badly damaged in a 1483 fire and the distinct façade that exists today was constructed as part of the Doge’s personal apartments. Various fires in the 1500s saw major refurbishments take place, but the Palazzo’s underlying structure has remained intact since the 1400s.

With the dissolution of the Republic of Venice in 1797, the Palazzo Ducale was used as the headquarters for various administrative bodies under the Habsburg Monarchy, and major state-funded renovations took place under the Kingdom of Italy in the late 1800s. In 1923, the Kingdom assigned the Palazzo Ducale to be opened as a museum, and it remains a museum to this day.

In the game
Ezio and Antonio scout out the Palazzo, and Ezio later uses a combination of Leonardo’s flying machine and a series of strategically positioned bonfires to enter the complex from above, where he fails to save Doge Mocenigo, but successfully assassinates Carlo Grimaldi in the courtyard.

Campo San Trovaso

The Campo San Trovaso from the waterfront, facing northeast, photographed in May 2014 by Didier Descouens.

The Campo di San Trovaso (Italian: “Field of Saint Trovaso”) is a public square in the Venetian sestiere of Dorsoduro. Dedicated to the Catholic Saints Gervasius and Protasius and named with a contraction of their names, the San Trovaso is known for its proximity to the Squero di San Trovaso, one of the few Venetian boatyards to still operate today, and for its unique structure, with an elevated section and two sides bordered by water.

In the game
The campo is the location of the Carnevale di Venezia celebration that Ezio attends in 1486 whilst hunting Doge Marco Barbarigo. He learns of a private party held by Barbarigo nearby, and enters a contest held in the campo to win a golden mask that would gain him entry to the party. In Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, an optional mission provides a flashback to the 1486 Carnevale, and shows Ezio secretly meeting with his ex-lover Cristina Vespucci on the campo.

The game’s database refers to this area as the Squero di San Trovaso, which is the name for the nearby shipyard, although that squero was not opened until the 1600s, well after the events of Assassin’s Creed 2.

Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Carmini

The Carmini, photographed in May 2010 by Didier Descouens.

The Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Carmini (English: “Church of Saint Mary of the Carmelites”) is a Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of Dorsoduro. Originally referred to as the Chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta (Italian: “Church of Saint Mary of the Assumption”), the Carmini was built around 1348 and was home to a Carmelite group tasked with stitching scapulars for the Carmelite monks.

In the game
The capture-the-flag game Ezio plays during Carnevale requires him to retrieve a flag positioned outside the Carmini. The church is also a viewpoint.

Landmarks of Venice, 4/5

Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pietà / Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione

The façade of the Pietà, photographed in May 2012 by Didier Descouens.

Santa Maria della Pietà (Italian: “Saint Mary of Pity”), or Santa Maria della Visitazione (Italian: “Saint Mary of the Visitation”) is a Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of Castello. The church was designed by Venetian architect Giorgio Massari and built between 1745 and 1760, and dedicated to the Visitation, an event in Christianity in which Saint Mary (Santa Maria in Italian) visited with Saint Elizabeth. The façade was left unfinished for centuries before finally being completed in 1906, albeit without a planned trio of statues on its roof.

In the game
The church is exclusively referred to as the Santa Maria della Visitazione in the game. The current church was not completed until more than 300 years after the end of Assassin’s Creed 2’s events, and the game’s church is probably based on the poorly-documented earlier church that existed on the site. The game inaccurately locates the Pietà in the Dorsoduro sestiere.

The race that Ezio takes part in during Carnevale starts outside the Visitazione. It also contains one of the Assassin seals and the tomb of the fictional Roman Hidden One Leonius, who, in the game’s continuity, assassinated Roman Emperor Caligula.

Arsenale di Venezia

The Arsenal’s Porta Magna (Italian: “Great Gate”) and the Campo de l’Arsenale (Italian: “Field of the Arsenal”), photographed in May 2012 by Didier Descouens. The flag flown atop the gate is the naval ensign of the Italian Republic, which is still in use.

The Arsenale di Venezia (Italian: “Arsenal of Venice”), usually called the Venetian Arsenal or simply ‘the Arsenal’, is an Italian naval base and historical industrial complex in the Castello sestiere of Venice. Although a shipyard inspired by those of the Byzantine Empire may have existed on this location as early as the 700s, the complex is not definitively known to have existed in its current form before the early 1200s.

The small original structure was largely used for private shipbuilding, but its development into the larger modern-day structure (the Arsenale Nuovo - New Arsenal) allowed Venetian state shipbuilders to fine-tune techniques for mass-producing vessels. Arsenal workers would construct individual parts of the ship in different areas of the Arsenal, a highly efficient practice that, at the peak of Venetian naval power in the early 1500s, allowed its 16,000 workers to complete the construction of a single ship in a single day. It was largely this then-unmatched efficiency and expertise at shipbuilding that allowed the Republic of Venice to dominate the Adriatic Sea with its powerful navy.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, the Arsenale is controlled by the Templar Order from 1320-1486, and is a stronghold for their Venetian operations. In the main story, Silvio Barbarigo and Dante Moro barricade themselves inside the Arsenale with an army of soldiers in 1486, where they plan to embark on a voyage to Cyprus to retrieve the magical Apple of Eden. However, Ezio assaults the Arsenale with the forces of Bartolomeo d’Alviano, and the ship departs without Silvio and Dante, who are soon killed by Ezio. In ♥♥♥♥, the voyage returns, and Ezio tracks a courier delivering the Apple from the Arsenale to Rodrigo Borgia. Ezio, with the other Assassins, defeats Borgia, and retrieves the Apple from him.

In an optional mission playable any time after Marco Barbarigo’s death, Ezio infiltrates the Arsenale’s drydocks and loots a Templar treasure room.

Basilica di San Pietro di Castello

The façade of the San Pietro, photographed in May 2010 by Didier Descouens.

The Basilica di San Pietro di Castello (Italian: “Basilica of Saint Peter of Castello”) is a Catholic church on the island of San Pietro di Castello (formerly Olivolo) in the Venetian sestiere of Castello. The current structure is dated to the 1500s, though earlier churches existed on the location as far back as the 600s. The original structure is said to have been built by Saint Magnus of Oderzo in a time when Venice was only a series of small communities in the Venetian Lagoon.

The church became the city’s official cathedral in 1451, and it saw significant renovation and refurbishment as a result. After the more significant San Marco was made Venice’s cathedral in 1807, the San Pietro fell into disrepair, being firebombed by the Allies in the Second World War and only seeing repairs in the 1970s.

In the game
There is a glyph on the basilica in Assassin’s Creed 2.

Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo

The Basilica in November 2016, photographed by Didier Descouens.

The Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo (Italian: “Basilica of Saints John and Paul”), known in Venetian as San Zanipolo (a contraction of the names ‘John’ and ‘Paul’) is a major Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of Castello. The basilica was the traditional location for the funeral services of Venice’s Doges, and the remains of 25 Doges were buried here. Built by the Dominican Order on a stretch of swampland donated by Doge Jacopo Tiepolo in 1245, the current church was constructed from 1333 to 1430. The Giovanni e Paolo is known for possessing the foot of Catherine of Siena, a member of the Dominican Order known for significant contributions to Italian literature.

In the game
Giovanni Mocenigo, who is Doge in Assassin’s Creed 2 until his assassination, is amongst the real-life Doges buried in the Giovanni e Paolo.

Chiesa della Madonna dell’Orto

The Madonna dell’Orto, photographed in May 2014 by Marc Ryckaert.

The Chiesa della Madonna dell’Orto (Italian: “Church of the Lady of the Garden”) is a Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of Cannaregio. Built in the mid-1300s by the now-extinct Humiliati Order, the church saw restoration work in 1399 by order of the Great Council, the church ended up in state hands in 1787 after papal repression of each of the successive orders to whom it was granted. The church supposedly earned its name after a statue of Saint Mary miraculously appeared in a nearby orchard.

In the game
The Madonna dell’Orto is a viewpoint in the game.

Landmarks of Venice, 5/5

Chiesa di San Giobbe

The San Giobbe, photographed in May 2012 by Didier Descouens.

The Chiesa di San Giobbe (Italian: “Church of Saint Job”) is a Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of Cannaregio. The church is part of a set of five Venetian churches built as thanks to the Christian God for the end of an outbreak of bubonic plague. It was commissioned by Doge Cristoforo Moro in 1471 and consecrated in 1493. Moro, who died during the church’s construction, was buried in the San Giobbe.

In the game
The San Giobbe is a viewpoint in the game. On a side note, Doge Cristoforo Moro, who commissioned the church, is cited in Assassin’s Creed 2 as having had a single son, Dante Moro, a minor antagonist and unwitting servant to Silvio Barbarigo. The real Cristoforo did have a son, Nicolò, who bears little resemblance to the fictional Dante.

Chiesa di San Zaccaria

The San Zaccaria’s façade, photographed in May 2012 by Didier Descouens.

The Chiesa di San Zaccaria (Italian: “Church of Saint Zechariah”) is a Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of Castello. A church existed on this site since the early 800s, founded by Doge Giustiniano Participazio to house the remains of Saint Zechariah, which had been granted to the Republic by Byzantine Emperor Leo V the Armenian (various churches in Azerbaijan, Israel, and elsewhere also claim to house Zechariah’s remains). A second church was built in the 1170s, and parts of it still stand today, as the current church was built next to its predecessor, not over it, as was common. Construction on the current San Zaccaria began in 1458 and was completed in 1515.

In the game
The San Zaccaria is a viewpoint in Assassin’s Creed 2. The game’s events coincide with a period in which the current church is under construction, and in accordance with this, it is depicted with wooden scaffolding around the façade and roof.

Chiesa di Santo Stefano

The Santo Stefano’s front door, photographed in May 2015 by Didier Descouens.

The Chiesa di Santo Stefano (Italian: “Church of Saint Stephen”) is a Catholic church in the Venetian sestiere of San Marco. It was built around 1300, with substantial renovations made in the subsequent two centuries. The Santo Stefano was supposedly the scene of violence so often throughout its history that it was deconsecrated six times by the Catholic church.

In the game
Although the Santo Stefano is a viewpoint in the game, it does not serve any narrative purpose.

Scuola Grande di San Marco

The Scuola, photographed in July 2006 by Giovanni dall’Orto.

The Scuola Grande di San Marco (Italian: “Great School of Saint Mark”) is a historical building in the Venetian sestiere of Castello. The Scuola was built in 1260 as the seat of a Catholic confraternity, but the original building was destroyed in a fire in 1485. The current building was constructed by the early 1500s, and it was used as a military hospital under the Habsburg Monarchy from 1819. Since 2013, the Scuola has been used as a medical museum.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2 inaccurately places the Scuola in the San Marco sestiere, although large parts of the game’s buildings overlap the border between it and Castello. A glyph is located on the building.

Government of the Most Serene Republic of Venice

The Republic of Venice followed a mixed government system, with a leadership comprising the monarchic Doge, several aristocratic councils to limit his power, and, until 1423, the concio (Italian: “assembly”), a democratic assembly of Venetian citizens.

Serenissima Signoria

L’udienza accordata dal doge di Venezia nella sala del Collegio nel Palazzo Ducale (Italian: “The audience granted by the Doge of Venice in the College Hall of the Doge’s Palace”), a 1775-1780 painting by Francesco Guardi depicting the Serenissima Signoria.

The Serenissima Signoria (Italian: “Most Serene Lordship”) was a Venetian governing body that included the Doge, the Minor Consiglio (Italian: “Minor Council”), and the Council of Forty. The Minor Council consisted of six officials who worked closely with the Doge - one member to represent each of Venice’s six sestieri. The Doge’s powers were strictly limited by the role of the Signoria, as he was barred from discussing official business or even reading his own letters without at least four members of the Signoria present.

Doge of Venice

Recreation of the Doge of Venice’s coat of arms by Wikipedia user ‘Sodacan’.

The Republic of Venice was initially an absolute monarchy, with the Doge ruling as an autocrat, but over time his power was rapidly and greatly reduced by the promissione ducale (Italian: “ducal promise”), an oath he was required to swear upon entering office that listed ways that he promised not to use his powers. The promissione became longer with each Doge, eventually growing so extensive that the role was largely reduced to that of a ceremonial figurehead. The Doge’s vote had the same importance as other government figures, but he held no significant powers to veto or otherwise alter government proceedings. The Doge received only minimal payment from the state, and so the role was largely relegated to already wealthy Venetian nobles who sought status rather than money or power.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2’s portrayal of the Doge’s role is not historically accurate. The game depicts the Templar Order going to great lengths to control the Doge, to the point of assassinating Doge Mocenigo to install their own agent, but in practice these machinations would be largely inconsequential, as the actual power that the Templar agent Marco Barbarigo would have held once elected Doge would have been comparable to those of his ally, Carlo Grimaldi, who sits on the Council of Ten. Therefore, it seems that if an organisation like the Templars sought total control over the Republic of Venice, it would be more practical to have multiple agents elected to the Council of Ten, rather than exclusively usurping the Doge.

Council of Ten

Gli ultimi momenti del doge Marin Faliero (Italian: “The death of Doge Marin Faliero”), an 1867 painting by Francesco Hayez depicting the Council of Ten.

The Council of Ten held authority over all government actions. Its ten members were elected by the Major Council to one-year terms, with any given personal barred from being elected again after their term had expired. It was also forbidden for more than one member of the same family to be a member of the Ten simultaneously in order to prevent it from becoming a de facto hereditary role. The Council’s operations were highly secretive, and its small size made it a highly efficient body. Over time, its efficiency resulted in greater powers referred to it, until it was, by the 1450s, exerting near-complete control over the Venetian government.

Great Council

The Maggior Consiglio (Italian: “Major Council”), often called the ‘Great Council’, was a council consisting of over 2,000 members with the responsibility of creating laws and appointing the Doge and the members of the Council of Ten. Seats on the Major Council were hereditary, and were held by Venetian aristocratic families.

House of Grimaldi

Recreation of the coat of arms of the House of Grimaldi by Wikipedia user ‘Denelson83’.

The House of Grimaldi is a European noble family with Genoese and Monégasque history. The House was founded in 1297 by Genoese Guelph leader François Grimaldi when he successfully captured Monaco, and his family have reigned as the Sovereign Princes or Princesses of Monaco to this day. Today, the family is headed by Albert II of Monaco, who has ruled as Sovereign Prince of Monaco since the death of his father, Rainier III, in April 2005.

In the game
Carlo Grimaldi, a fictional member of the family, appears in Assassin’s Creed 2. Carlo is a Templar agent and member of Venice’s Council of Ten, a position he attempts to use to manipulate the Doge, Giovanni Mocenigo. Despite Ezio’s attempt to intervene, Grimaldi kills Mocenigo in 1485, and his Templar ally, Marco Barbarigo, is appointed Doge.

Marco Barbarigo, Doge of Venice (c. 1413-1486)

Portrait of the doge of Venice Marco Barbarigo, a posthumous portrait painted in the late 1500s by Venetian artist Domenico Tintoretto.

Marco Barbarigo was the 73rd Doge of Venice from 1485 to 1486, succeeding Giovanni Mocenigo after his death. Marco died in August 1486 in what is believed to have been a violent dispute instigated by his brother, a Procurator named Agostino Barbarigo. After Marco’s death, Agostino was appointed Doge.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Marco Barbarigo is a Templar agent, and Rodrigo Borgia arranges for him to succeeded Mocenigo as Doge after Mocenigo’s assassination. Knowing that Ezio seeks to kill him, Marco remains sealed inside the Palazzo Ducale until Carnevale, at which time Ezio infiltrates the party and assassinates him with Leonardo’s gun. As with the historical figure, the game’s Marco is succeeded by his brother, Agostino Barbarigo, who is secretly an agent of the Order of Assassins. Marco’s fictional cousins Emilio and Silvio Barbarigo also appear as secondary villains. In Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, whilst posing as a minstrel, Ezio references Marco in one of his improvised songs.

Giovanni Ser di Mocenigo, Jr., Doge of Venice (1409-1485)

Portrait of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo, painted between 1478 and 1479 by Venetian artist Gentile Bellini, depicts Mocenigo at the beginning of his term as Doge.

Giovanni Mocenigo was Doge of Venice from 1478 until his death in 1485. He is best known for his conflicts against Mehmed II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, the latter from whom he recaptured the Polesine of Rovigo, a region which corresponds with the modern day Italian Republic’s province of Rovigo. After Mocenigo’s death in September 1485, he was interred at the Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo (Italian: “Basilica of Saints John and Paul”) in Venice. It was speculated at the time that Mocenigo was killed by poison, but this is not a widely accepted claim amongst historians.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Mocenigo is Doge of Venice during Ezio’s arrival in the city, and is the victim of an assassination plot by Rodrigo Borgia, who plans to have him poisoned by Templar agents Carlo Grimaldi and Silvio Barbarigo, and replaced with the Templar Marco Barbarigo. Ezio kills Grimaldi, but intervenes too late to save the Doge, and is himself accused of the killing, leading him to be hunted as an outlaw by the new Doge, Marco Barbarigo.

Firearms

A 1470 painting depicting a battle between Zürich and Schwyz soldiers (both modern-day Swiss Confederation). The Schwyz (left) are depicted firing arquebuses.

The earliest uses of gunpowder date to sometime before 142 CE, in Eastern Han China. The Mongols spread the use of the material far and wide during their conflicts with the Jin and Song dynasties, and Genghis Khan used bombs and other explosive weapons during his invasion of Jin China. Gunpowder soon spread to the Middle East, and into Europe via either the Silk Road or the Mongols in the early 1300s. Firearms were largely based on Chinese designs, and the 1346 Battle of Crécy between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdoms of France and Bohemia saw the earliest major military use of gunpowder by a European army.

The late 1300s saw a transition from the Chinese firearms, designed for personal use into what would more traditionally be considered a ‘cannon’, and the 1400s saw significant development of European firearms, with the invention of arquebuses quickly driving the use of metal body armour into obsolescence. Sentiment against the use of firearms over more traditional weapons was largely negative for several centuries, although their effectiveness meant that they saw widespread use in armies across Europe.

The larger musket appeared in the 1500s, although it, like the arquebus, was notably highly inaccurate. The limited effectiveness of firearms at long ranges meant that the bow and arrow was not truly obsolete in Europe until the late 1590s, though even this was not because the guns were accurate, but simply because of the advent of ‘volley fire’, a strategy which the Dutch developed to simply increase the simultaneous output of the guns instead of their individual accuracy.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2 features few significant appearances of firearms. Leonardo develops a pistol for Ezio that is small enough to be hidden beneath his sleeve, but such a thing is obviously completely impossible for the time period, as the projectile would be both too inaccurate and too low-velocity to deal significant damage. Cannons can be heard during the Orsi attack on Forlì, although they cannot be seen. Firearms appear far more heavily in the sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, which regularly features arquebuses, cannons, and other gunpowder-based weaponry.

Carnevale di Venezia

Masked Lovers, a photograph by Frank Kovalchek taken at the 2010 Carnevale.

The Carnevale di Venezia (Italian: “Carnival of Venice”) is an Italian festival originating in the Republic of Venice. The origin of the event is largely undocumented, and a legendary account states that it began as an impromptu celebration of Venice’s 1162 victory over Ulrich II von Treven, Patriarch of Aquileia (modern northern-Italy). The festival was officiated at some point during the Renaissance, and was celebrated annually in the city, ending with the beginning of Lent, a 40-day Christian celebration.

After the end of the Republic of Venice in 1797, Carnevale and the tradition of wearing masks was made illegal by Francis II, Emperor of Austria. The event was occasionally celebrated privately in the 1800s, and was officially celebrated again in 1979, under the Italian Republic. The event has been held annually every year since, with the exception of the 2020 event, which was cancelled in an effort to limit the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Carnevale masks are the most iconic symbol of the event, though Venetian laws allowed them to be worn only between the beginning of the Feat of the Ascension of Jesus Christ (October 5) and the end of Carnevale on Shrove Tuesday (February or early March). Sumptuary laws were not enforced for the duration of Carnevale, allowing Venetians to dress extravagantly regardless of their social standing.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, 1486’s Carnevale begins at some time after the assassination of Doge Giovanni Mocenigo, and Ezio wins a variety of games in order to attend the newly-elected Doge Marco Barbarigo’s private party and assassinate him. The game keeps Barbarigo’s death on the historical date of 15 February 1486, which does line up with the traditional dates of Carnevale.

Agostino Barbarigo, Doge of Venice (1419-1501)

Portrait of Doge Agostino Barbarigo, a posthumous 1518 portrait by Marco Basaiti.

Agostino Barbarigo was a Venetian politician who became Doge in 1486, after the death of his brother, Marco. During his tenure, the Republic formed the League of Venice, a coalition of Italian states including the Margraviate of Mantua and the Duchy of Milan, as part of a successful effort to remove the French forces of King Charles VIII from the Italian Peninsula, culminating in the Battle of Fornovo in 1495 - in which the League unsuccessfully tried to crush an already retreating French army.

In 1492, diplomatic relations between Barbarigo and Bayezid II, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire deteriorated, leading to years of continuous war between the two countries. This conflict ended diplomatically in 1508, but Venice saw heavy losses of territory, and Barbarigo’s failings led to severe restrictions on the power of subsequent Doges after his death.

In the game
In Assassin’s Creed 2, Agostino is an ally of the Assassin Order, appearing only in a brief scene after Ezio’s assassination of Marco, in which he assures the Assassins that he will not associate with the Templars and tells Ezio that his cousin, Silvio, has taken control of the Venetian Arsenal. The League of Venice and conflicts with the Ottoman Empire are not touched on in the game’s story.

Bartolomeo d’Alviano (1455-1515)

An unattributed etching of Bartolomeo from the 1500s.

Bartolomeo d’Alviano, also known as Bartolomeo Liviano, was a condottiero best known for his service in conflicts between the Republic of Venice and the Holy Roman Empire. He was born in the Umbrian town of Todi, in what is now the province of Perugia in the Italian Republic to parents of the noble Liviano family, and fought for the Papal States from a young age. He fought alongside the victorious Spanish forces of Ferdinand II in the 1503 Battle of Garigliano against the French, and in 1507 he entered the service of the Republic of Venice.

For Venice, he saw success against the army of the Holy Roman Empire in 1508, but was captured in 1509 after his insubordination contributed to the Venetian defeat by the French in the Battle of Agnadello. Imprisoned by the French for four years, Bartolomeo was freed in 1513 and was defeated by Spain and the Holy Roman Empire in the Battle of La Motta. In 1515, he joined a Venetian and French force in defeating Swiss and Milanese armies in the Battle of Marignano - the final major engagement of the War of the League of Cambrai. Less than a month after this victory, Bartolomeo was killed during a siege of the city of Brescia, in what is now the Lombardy region of the Italian Republic.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2 does not show any of the major events of Bartolomeo’s military career. He is first seen in Venice in the 1480s, where he commands a group of condottieri headquartered in the Castello sestiere and is embroiled in a conflict with Silvio Barbarigo. He helps Ezio besiege the Venetian Arsenal and assassinate Silvio Barbarigo, and is later revealed to be a member of the Assassin Order. He also appears as a minor character in the sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

The game depicts Bartolomeo as a large man, but contemporary sources indicate that he was thin and physically small.

Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)

A portrait of Machiavelli by Santi di Tito from the late 1500s.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was a Florentine diplomat and philosopher, best known for his writings on political philosophy. Machiavelli worked in a clerical capacity for the Florentine government, before being sent to the Florentine comune of Pistoia to settle a factional dispute. Machiavelli advocated banishing both factions’ leaders, a result that came to pass after a diplomatic approach failed to see an end to the conflict.

At the beginning of the 1500s, Machiavelli formed a militia for Florence, and is notable for populating his army with Florentine citizens rather than the mercenaries who were more typical at the time. Machiavelli distrusted mercenaries, and believed that patriotism was an important attribute for a good soldier. This army would defeat Pisan forces in a 1509 battle, but was defeated by the Medici family’s Spanish army at Prato in 1512. This defeat paved the way for the Medici to reinstate themselves as Florence’s leaders, and Machiavelli was banished from the city before being accused of conspiracy and tortured for three weeks by the Medici, before being released.

After his ordeal at the hands of the Medici, Machiavelli retired to his farm in rural Tuscany, where he dedicated himself to writing his renowned works of political science, including The Prince and the Discourses on Livy. During his retirement, Machiavelli longed to return to his political career, and travelled western Europe to stay involved with the politics of the time. Whilst Machiavelli’s political works were not well-known during his lifetime, he did become a successful playwright toward the end of his life. He died in 1527 at the age of 58.

Today, Machiavelli’s writing is famous for its cynical and pragmatic approach to politics, war, and idealism. His rejection of ideology and embrace of potentially immoral means to achieve what he perceives as a just end are the best-known of Machiavelli’s beliefs, and the term ‘Machiavellian’ is used to denote political machinations that are deceptive or cutthroat.

In the game
Machiavelli is a somewhat minor character in Assassin’s Creed 2, appearing towards the end of the game as the head of the Assassin Orders operations on the Italian Peninsula. Machiavelli inducts Ezio into the Assassins after retrieving the Apple of Eden from Rodrigo Borgia, and accompanies Ezio to Forlì and Florence during the attempted coup of the former and reign of Savonarola over the latter. When Ezio travels to Vatican City, Machiavelli encourages Ezio not to let Borgia live. Machiavelli appears in a greater capacity in the sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood.

The Orsi family

Recreation of the Orsi coat of arms by Wikipedia user ‘Massimop’.

The Orsi were a Romagnan noble family best known for their involvement in the ♥♥♥♥ ‘Orsi conspiracy’, which saw the Lord of Forlì, Girolamo Riario assassinated in an attempted coup. Brothers Checco and Ludovico Orsi killed Riario, and briefly imprisoned his widow, Caterina Sforza, before fleeing from the forces of her uncle, Ludovico Sforza, and essentially disappearing from history. The family’s patriarch, Andrea, was tortured and killed at Forlì’s Rocca di Ravaldino for his involvement in the attempt.

In the game
Checco and Ludovico Orsi both appear in Assassin’s Creed 2. Caterina Sforza mentions having hired them to kill her husband, only for them to return to Forlì shortly after and hold her hostage in an attempt to acquire a map made by Riario that depicts the locations of Altaïr’s codex pages. The brothers abduct Ottaviano and Bianca Riario, Caterina’s children, but Ezio kills both brothers and rescues the children after a series of skirmishes with Orsi soldiers in the streets of Forlì. Both characters are members of the Templar Order.

The real Orsi coup was the same event as Riario’s assassination, but the game depicts them occurring several months apart. Andrea doesn’t appear in the game, and the attempt is depicted more as an isolated attack by the two brothers than a coordinated attempted overthrow undertaken by the entire noble family.

♥♥♥♥ Orsi conspiracy

On 14 April ♥♥♥♥, Girolamo Riario, Lord of Forlì and Imola, was murdered in his home by nobleman Checco Orsi and his allies. Riario’s recent reintroduction of heavy taxes after a period of none whatsoever had made him highly unpopular, and Checco and his brother Ludovico Orsi planned to kill him and overthrow him as Lord of Forlì. Checco was a high-ranking Forlivesi noble, and as such he possessed the privilegio della chiave (Italian: “key privilege”) - the right to visit Riario without needing to be invited. Checco used this privilege to enter Riario’s residence with a pair of assassins, and after Checco stabbed Riario, his allies finished the job. The assassins threw Riario’s corpse from the window of his palace and into the adjacent plaza, where Ludovico had incited a protest of Forlivesi citizens.

After Riario’s murder, his wife, Caterina Sforza, and their children, Bianca and Ottaviano Riario, were captured by the Orsi. The castellan of the Rocca di Ravaldino held the fortress against the Orsi attackers, refusing to give it up, and Caterina told her captors that she would negotiate with him, and was set free to do so. A disputed account says that once inside the Rocca, Caterina shouted to her former captors that her still-captive children would provide them no leverage over her, as she was pregnant with a new heir to Riario. This statement is believed to have been a lie, but it nonetheless destroyed any power that the Orsi had to negotiate with her.

As Caterina remained holed up in the Rocca, the Orsi’s bid for power over Forlì fell apart on its own, as the city’s councils refused to accept them as the rulers, and voted to return the city to the rule of the Pope. On 24 April, Caterina’s uncle, Ludovico Sforza, arrived with his army and relieved the city, allowing Ottaviano Riario to take the position of Lord of Forlì and for Caterina to rule de facto as regent.

In the game
Assassin’s Creed 2 depicts the Orsi coup with very little accuracy. In the game, Caterina Sforza hires Checco and Ludovico to assassinate Girolamo Riario. The brothers do so, but the subsequent attempt to overthrow Forlì is an entirely separate event, backed by Pope Alexander VI and motivated by the presence of a map created by Riario that shows the locations of the pages of Altaïr’s codex. The Orsi brothers capture Forlì when Caterina leaves to greet Ezio and Machiavelli, and the trio takes a group of soldiers to the Rocca di Ravaldino. The Orsi capture Bianca and Ottaviano Riario and take them outside the walls, forcing Ezio to leave the fortress and rescue them. Ezio kills Ludovico, then chases down Checco to retrieve the stolen Apple.

Bianca Riario (1478-1522)

Bianca Riario was the daughter of Caterina Sforza and her first husband, Girolamo Riario. Born during the couple’s time living in Vatican City, Bianca was with Caterina during the period of turmoil following the death of Pope Sixtus IV, and was sheltered along with her siblings in the Castel Sant’Angelo as Caterina used its powerful position to supervise the election of a new Pope.

Bianca moved with her family to Forlì after the resolution of the conflict, and she was taken prisoner alongside her family after the assassination of her father during the Orsi conspiracy. Bianca later witnessed the assassination of her stepfather, Giacomo Feo in 1495, and after her mother’s regency over Forlì was usurped by Cesare Borgia in 1500, Bianca took up the care of her 2-year-old half-brother, Lodovico de’ Medici, before being married to Troili I de’ Rossi, 1st Marquis of San Secondo and 6th Count of San Secondo (now a comune in the modern-day Italian province of Parma).

By this marriage, Bianca became the Marchioness and Countess of San Secondo, and she moved her residence to the Rocca dei Rossi (Italian: “Rossi Fortress”) in San Secondo. After Troili’s death in June 1521, Bianca ruled San Secondo as regent for his young heir - her son, Pietro Maria de’ Rossi. During her regency, Lodovico - now a renowned condottiero and the founder of the Bande Nere (Italian: “Black Bands”) mercenary company, aided her in protecting her interests against largely hostile neighbouring forces.

Bianca died in Florence at some point after 1522, though the exact date is unknown.

In the game
Bianca appears during the Orsi conspiracy in Assassin’s Creed 2. She and her brother Ottaviano are kidnapped by Checco and Ludovico Orsi and held to ransom outside of Forlì. Ezio rescues Bianca, who is held in the village outside Forlì. She is later seen returning to the Rocca di Ravaldino with her brother.

Ottaviano Riario (1479-1523)

Ottaviano Riario was a Forlivesi noble who ruled as Lord of Forlì and Imola from the death of his father, Girolamo Riario, in ♥♥♥♥, until 1500, when he was deposed by condottiero Cesare Borgia. After losing his territories, Ottaviano joined the Catholic Church and held the position of Bishop of Viterbo until his death in 1523.

Throughout Ottaviano’s rule, his mother, Caterina Sforza, served as regent, and held near-total control over Forlì and Imola. Caterina’s husband, Giacomo Feo, also held significant power during Ottaviano’s childhood, but he was assassinated in a 1495 attack by conspirators aiming to prevent Giacomo from usurping Ottaviano’s rule.

In the game
Ottaviano appears during the Orsi conspiracy in Assassin’s Creed 2. He and his sister are abducted by the Orsi brothers, and Ottaviano is held at the top of a lighthouse near Forlì by Ludovico Orsi. Ezio kills Ludovico and rescues Ottaviano, who is later seen returning to the Rocca with his sister.

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498)

A portrait of Girolamo Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo, dated shortly before Savonarola’s death.

Girolamo Savonarola was a Ferraresi Christian preacher known for his extreme puritanical Christian views and brief theocratic rule over the Tuscan city of Florence. In his youth, Savonarola studied an arts degree at the University of Ferrara and planned to enter medical school, but in April 1475 he abandoned this goal and instead joined the Friary of San Domenico, becoming an ordained priest within a year. In 1482, he became a teacher at the Convent of San Marco in Florence, but he was largely unpopular due to his extremely negative views of the state of the world and the Catholic Church, and because the Florentines found his Ferraresi accent and style of delivery unsavoury.

Throughout the 1480s, Savonarola travelled around northern Italy, preaching repentance to the major cities of the region, before returning to San Marco once again in 1490. In the first years of the 1490s, Savonarola preached that God would send war to the Italian Peninsula as punishment for the sins of its people, and that the church would soon be reformed. The entry of Charles VIII of France onto the Peninsula in September 1494 was seen by many as a fulfillment of Savonarola’s prophecies, and Savonarola soon successfully negotiated to keep French forces out of Florence. As Charles continued south, a group of Savonarola’s supporters began to exert his influence over the Florentine government, making Savonarola the de facto leader of the city.

In April 1495, Savonarola declared that art should be used only as an expression of religious devotion, and called upon the Florentine citizenry to destroy secular art and other objects that he deemed ‘sinful’. The Pope, Alexander VI, had tolerated Savonarola’s activities to this point, but Florence’s refusal to join the League of Venice and help expel Charles VIII from Italy prompted him to summon Savonarola to the Vatican for trial, then to ban him from preaching entirely after his refusal to come.

Savonarola’s puritanical preachings culminated in the ‘bonfire of the vanities’, which occurred on Shrove Tuesday in 1497, when his supporters destroyed thousands of objects including musical instruments, literature, art, and fine clothing. Several months later, Alexander VI threatened Florence with an interdict and excommunicated Savonarola, who withdrew from public preaching under pressure from the Florentine government the following year.

An unattributed 1641 drawing of the execution of Savonarola and two friars who supported him.

In 1498, Savonarola was challenged by a rival preacher to conduct an ordeal by fire (in which he would have to walk over burning coals in order to prove that God would heal his wounds quickly), but the scheduled date of 7 April 1498 saw heavy rainfall, which the Florentine people largely interpreted as a sign that God was against Savonarola. Soon after, Savonarola was arrested by Florence’s religious bodies and tortured into renouncing his prophecies. He was put on trial in the Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498 and found guilty of heresy. He was immediately hanged in the Piazza and his corpse was burnt in the gallows. The ashes were thrown in the Arno to prevent his supporters from treating them as a relic.

In the game
Savonarola appears in both expansions for Assassin’s Creed 2, first at the end of the Battle of Forlì, in which he encounters a wounded Ezio in the hills outside Forlì and steals the Apple of Eden from him, and later in the Bonfire of the Vanities chapter, in which he uses the Apple’s power to take control of the population of Florence. Ezio and Machiavelli travel to Florence to retrieve the Apple, and Ezio kills several of his brainwashed lieutenants whilst the Assassins stir up unrest in the city. Their plan comes to fruition when a mob carries Savonarola off to the Piazza della Signoria to burn him at the stake. Ezio retrieves the Apple, then mercy-kills a burning Savonarola before encouraging the gathered spectators not to submit so easily to the rule of dictators.

Savonarola’s death is depicted differently than the historical event. In the game, he is lynched by a Florentine mob by being burnt at the stake. In reality, he was held in prison before formally being found guilty and executed by hanging.

Landmarks of the Vatican, 1499

Tiber

The Tiber in Rome, where it is crossed by the Ponte Vittorio Emmanuele II (Italian: “Victor Emmanuel II Bridge”), photographed in September 2011 by Jean-Pol Grandmont.

The Tiber is a river on the Italian Peninsula, stretching from the Apennine Mountains in the Emilia-Romagna region to the Tyrrhenian Sea. The river is 406 kilometres long, and is best known for its connections to the city of Rome, which was founded on its banks.

In the game
In the game’s final chapter, Ezio arrives at Vatican City via the Tiber as part of his mission to assassinate the Pope, Alexander VI. The game’s sequel, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood is set almost entirely within Rome, and the Tiber therefore makes major appearances in that game as well.

Castel Sant’Angelo

The Castel Sant’Angelo in July 2008, photographed by Torbjörn Toby Jorgensen.

The Mausoleum of Hadrian was built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian as a tomb for his family, and was completed in 139 CE. After the fall of the western Roman Empire, the Mausoleum was converted into a fortress by the Catholic Church and renamed the Castel Sant’Angelo (Italian: “Castle of the Holy Angel”). Various popes used it as a fortress and residence in emergencies, as well as a prison. In 1901, the Sant’Angelo was decommissioned and today it is known as the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant’Angelo (Italian: “National Museum of the Castle of the Holy Angel”), and operates as a museum.

In the game
After arriving in Rome via the Tiber, Ezio scales the outermost walls of the Sant’Angelo before following the Passetto di Borgo to the Sistine Chapel. The fortress itself is not a major location in this game, but serves a significant narrative purpose in the sequel, Brotherhood.

Passetto di Borgo

The Passetto di Borgo, photographed from the Castel Sant’Angelo in March 2009 by Wikipedia user ‘Chris 73’.

The Passetto di Borgo is a walkway in Rome that connects Vatican City to the nearby Castel Sant’Angelo. It’s primary purpose is as an escape route for Vatican residents, who historically used it during times of conflict to flee the city and take refuge in the well-fortified Sant’Angelo.

In the game
In the game’s final mission, Ezio fights his way through Vatican guards along the Passetto di Borgo to reach the Sistine Chapel and kill Alexander VI. The game’s Passetto is depicted more like a long castle wall, whereas the real structure is more of a raised walkway.

Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel ceiling and The Last Judgment, photographed in June 2014 by Antoine Taveneaux.

The Cappella Sistina (Italian: “Sistine Chapel”) is a chapel in Vatican City which has been used as the site of papal elections since its restoration by Pope Sixtus IV, which ended in 1481. The chapel is best known for the elaborate Renaissance-era paintings that decorate it, including Michelangelo’s legendary painting on the chapel’s ceiling (usually just called the Sistine Chapel ceiling), which is considered one of the greatest artistic achievements of humankind.

Sixtus gave the first mass at the chapel in August 1483, and it was consecrated that same day. The papal conclave of 1492 was the first to be held in the chapel, and elected Rodrigo Borgia as Alexander VI. The chapel was completed in 1508, and Michelangelo returned to paint The Last Judgment behind its altar decades later, completing the work in 1541.

It is a Catholic tradition to use a temporary chimney erected above the chapel as a means of communicating to the public whether a new pope has been chosen by the conclave. This tradition has continued to the modern day, and was last used to signify the election of Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope Francis in March 2013.

In the game
Ezio arrives at the Sistine Chapel in the final mission of the game via the Passetto di Borgo to assassinate Alexander VI. The inside of the chapel is lined with wooden scaffolding, indicating that it is still under construction, and the ceiling art and The Last Judgment are missing, which is accurate. Ezio uses the scaffolding to attack Alexander from above, and uses the Apple to fight him in front of the altar. Alexander escapes into the secret First Civilization vault behind the altar, and Ezio fights him again inside. Ezio enters the vault and uncovers its secrets, and the game ends there. Assassin’s Creed 2’s sequel, Brotherhood, picks up right where this game left off, and the Sistine Chapel therefore makes another appearance in that game.

Bibliography

The bibliography is too long too put in a single section, so rather than chop it up into, like, ten different ones, here’s[docs.google.com] a link to a Google Docs file containing the full list.

[Sae La Vie]

Quality read, thank you!

[Dylan]

I agree that some bits of this guide need a rewrite. I think explaining Christianity is largely redundant and that section would be better if I geared it towards cultural factors. Thanks for your feedback; glad you enjoyed it.

[caliber_eyes]

Very very good. However, I would suggest a little change to when describing Christianity. Specifically, pertaining to Jesus himself. He was not only a Jewish rabbi, but he was very explicitly vocal on being GOD himself as well. This matter is a point of contention across Christianity (in which people have died over this very aspect) that pertains to the Holy Trinity.

Secondly, in one point saying "Today, this state is the only absolute monarchy in the world, ruled by the current pope", is not entirely true. Saudi Arabia is also considered an absolute monarchy. In addition, stating that the Vatican is both a theocracy and absolute monarchy would further provide a better picture in describing the nation.

Other than that, this is an excellent passage.

[Loadingue]

Haha, my first thought was also that it censored the F-word.

[Dylan]

I never noticed that! It makes it look like I have very strong feelings about the Orsi conspiracy!

[Loadingue]

I'm noticing that the year "fourteen-eighty-eight" was censored, doubtlessly because of completely unrelated political notions. This is very silly, but I'm not sure if there's anything that can be done about it. Valve, come on, this is ridiculous...

[Dylan]

A few months but it would've been shorter if I actually consistently worked on it. I would leave it untouched for weeks and then go nuts working on it constantly for a few days.

[Kingof3D]

this is impressive how long did it take to make this

[TacoNacho]

Jesus that was a long, yet cool read.

[NINE TλILED FOX]

Curiously enough, I first heard about Francesco de' Pazzi and his death because it appeared in the 2001 Hannibal movie!