What do we really know about the Renaissance? The era of wealthy patrons of art, the development of technology, the discovery of new continents. But at the same time, it was a time when treachery and corruption, wars between republics, cruelty, hunger, prostitution and epidemics flourished. Historian Katherine Fletcher in her book demonstrates the true face of the Renaissance in all its diversity. Bankers, priests, women writers, Jewish traders, mercenaries, engineers, prostitutes and farmers - they all played no less a role than the Medici and Machiavelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo. This book is an amazing journey through the controversial and dark era that laid the foundation for our modern civilization.