The Adriatic port city of Ancona, perched on Italy’s eastern coast, stood in 1173 as one of the last bastions of independence against the encroaching power of Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa. Already scarred by repeated wars with imperial forces and their Lombard allies, Ancona’s…
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On May 12, 1743, Maria Theresa of Austria—daughter of the late Emperor Charles VI and the embattled heiress to the Habsburg dominions—was crowned Queen of Bohemia in Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral, sealing a hard-won victory not only over the armies of her Bavarian rival,…
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