Political theorists and Italian studies scholars are celebrating the 500th anniversary of Niccolò Machiavelli’s Il Principe (The Prince), which was written in 1513 and published in 1532.

Machiavelli’s Il Principe is a brief treatise on the art of governing that shocked many contemporaries and ended up on the Papal List of Prohibited Books. Early modern political theorists nonetheless debated Machiavelli’s work and wrote numerous responses to it. An entire genre of anti-Machiavellian political theories developed following its 1532 publication and remained popular through the eighteenth century. Although Il Principe was a distillation of Machiavelli’s more extended treatises, the book has remained his most read work and it continues to be used in undergraduate history and philosophy courses worldwide.

The Aspen Institute Italia and the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana (or Treccani Institute), are jointly sponsoring an exhibition on Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince and his times. 1513-2013 at the Vittoriano Museum in Rome from 25 April to 16 June 2013.

NPR reports on celebrations in Italy.

Northern Illinois University students in HIST 420 The Renaissance will be interested in this story.