At the foot of Rome’s Capitoline Hill, by the staircase leading to the Piazza del Campidoglio, seat of the city government since the Middle Ages, a statue of a hooded man waving a sword commemorates a crime.

On this spot seven centuries ago, a mob murdered Nicola di Rienzo. Known to history as Cola Rienzi, Last of the Tribunes, this charismatic young dictator briefly resurrected the Roman Republic and almost united Italy before his terrible fall.