Early modern age

Between the 15th and 17th centuries Europe changes its face. In Italy artists and scholars rediscover the ancient world and invent a new way of painting, building and thinking: this is the Renaissance. Printing with movable type makes books and ideas travel faster than ever. European navigators cross the oceans and meet peoples and continents they did not know, often with terrible consequences for the people who lived there. Meanwhile scientists learn to study the sky and the human body with instruments and experiments.

The era on a line: 25 events

1. about 1420 Renaissance perspective
2. 1436 Brunelleschi completes the dome
3. 1453 The fall of Constantinople
4. about 1455 Gutenberg prints the Bible
5. 1469 Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence
6. about 1485 Leonardo designs machines
7. 1492 Columbus's voyage
8. 1498 Vasco da Gama reaches India
9. 1504 Michelangelo carves David
10. 1508 Raphael paints the Vatican Rooms
11. 1517 Luther and the Reformation
12. 1521 The conquest of Tenochtitlán
13. 1522 The first voyage round the world
14. 1543 Copernicus puts the Sun at the centre
15. 1545–1563 The Council of Trent
16. about 1550 Tomatoes, maize and potatoes reach Europe
17. 1582 The Gregorian calendar
18. about 1590 Shakespeare's theatre
19. 1605 Regular newspapers
20. 1609 Galileo turns his telescope to the sky
21. 1609 Kepler describes the orbits
22. about 1612 Artemisia Gentileschi
23. 1628 Harvey studies the circulation of the blood
24. 1660 Scientific academies
25. 1687 Newton publishes the Principia

Did you know?

• Brunelleschi's dome weighs about 37,000 tonnes and is still the largest brick dome ever built.
• When the sailors came home from the first voyage round the world, they realised they had ‘lost’ a day: by always sailing west they had seen one sunset fewer than the people who stayed at home. Antonio Pigafetta noted it in his diary.
• Not everyone adopted the Gregorian calendar straight away: Great Britain and its colonies did so only in 1752, and Russia not until 1918.

storiascopio.com/en/era/early-modern-age/ · free worksheet, you may photocopy it for your class

1. Put in order: write 1 next to the oldest and 5 next to the most recent.

• The fall of Constantinople
• The first voyage round the world
• Harvey studies the circulation of the blood
• Shakespeare's theatre
• Vasco da Gama reaches India

2. Choose the right answer.

1. How did Brunelleschi keep the bricks of the dome in place while it was being built?

   • He hung them with ropes from wooden towers
   • He laid them in a herringbone pattern
   • He used great iron columns in the middle
   • He poured reinforced concrete

2. What were Gutenberg's movable letters made of?

   • Oak wood
   • Baked clay
   • Metal
   • Glass

3. Which people lived on the island in the Bahamas where Columbus landed?

   • The Taíno
   • The Incas
   • The Aztecs
   • The Maya

4. What did Luther criticise in his 95 Theses?

   • The new calendar
   • Columbus's voyage
   • The invention of printing
   • The sale of indulgences

3. Match each person to what they did: write the right letter.

Storiascopio · texts by Ciro Simone Irmici, written with the help of AI and checked · sources in the online cards