These findings support the hypothesis that seventeenth-century plagues played a fundamental role in triggering the process of relative decline of the Italian economies.' Literature Population before the plague and death toll, selected cities: CityĪ 2019 study argues the plague of 1629–1631 led to lower growth in several cities affected by the plague and 'caused long-lasting damage to the size of Italian urban populations and to urbanization rates. Later outbreaks of bubonic plague in Italy occurred in the city of Florence in 1630–1633 and the areas surrounding Naples, Rome and Genoa in 1656–57. This outbreak of plague also spread north into Tyrol, an alpine region of western Austria and northern Italy. The papal city of Bologna lost an estimated 15,000 citizens to the plague, with neighboring smaller cities of Modena and Parma also being heavily affected. Some historians believe that the drastic loss of life, and its impact on commerce, ultimately resulted in the downfall of Venice as a major commercial and political power.

The city of Venice was severely hit, with recorded casualties of 46,000 out of a population of 140,000. Įast of Lombardy, the Republic of Venice was infected in 1630–31. Overall, Milan suffered approximately 60,000 fatalities out of a total population of 130,000. A major outbreak in March 1630 resulted from relaxed health measures during the carnival season, followed by a second wave in the spring and summer of 1631. Although the city instituted a quarantine and limited access to external visitors and trade goods, it failed to eliminate the disease. The disease first spread to Venetian troops and in October 1629 reached Milan, Lombardy's major commercial centre.

Thought to have originated in Northern France in 1623, the plague was carried throughout Europe as a result of troop movements associated with the Thirty Years' War and was allegedly brought to Lombardy in 1629 by soldiers involved in the War of the Mantuan Succession. The plague may have contributed to the decline of Italy's economy relative to those of other Western European countries. One of two major outbreaks in Italy during the 17th century, it affected northern and central Italy and resulted in at least 280,000 deaths, with some estimating fatalities as high as one million, or about 35% of the population. The Italian Plague of 1629–1631, also referred to as the Great Plague of Milan, was part of the second plague pandemic that began with the Black Death in 1348 and ended in the 18th century. Babila, Milan, during the plague of 1630: plague carts carry the dead for burial.

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