From a base in 15th-century Florence, the Medici family used charm, patronage, duplicity, and ruthlessness to amass wealth and power. The Medicis also ignited Western history's most important cultural and artistic revolution, the Renaissance, but doomed their own ordered world. This epic drama in the courts, cathedrals, and palaces of Europe traces a family's powerful ambition and a continent's tortured struggle to emerge from the Dark Ages.