By 1737, the Medici name should’ve vanished.
No heirs. No future. Just a dying bloodline.

But they left behind Botticelli.
Michelangelo. Galileo.

This is how a family with no descendants became immortal. 🧵👇 The Medici weren’t kings.
But they ruled Florence like one.

They started as bankers.
Ended as popes, queens, and Grand Dukes.

Their army wasn’t made of soldiers.
It was made of artists. 📸:Abs

Every generation says the same thing:
“Not this time.”
“Not here.”

But Reims burned.
Rouen collapsed.
The Duomo was bombed.

All before nuclear weapons existed.

This is what war does to art, faith, and memory. 🧵👇 1914. Reims Cathedral.

German shells hit.
Scaffolding ignited.
The lead roof melted and poured like lava.
Sculptures exploded from the heat.

For 800 years, kings had been crowned there.
Now? A blackened ruin.

The world remembers the Medici.
It glamorizes the Borgia.

But one family outlived them all,
— surviving war, exile, and popes who wanted them dead.

900 years. One name.

Colonna.
Rome’s eternal dynasty 🧵👇 While others fell, they adapted.
While others schemed, they fought.

Most dynasties rise, peak, and fade.
The Colonna rewrote that script,

— With blood, poetry, and politics. 🎥:Abs

He wasn’t the father. And he knew it.
Most men would’ve left.

Joseph didn’t.

He chose mercy.
Then obedience.
Then love.

— This is the man who never preached a word but lived the Gospel. 🧵👇 He came from royal blood.
A descendant of King David.

But he wasn't a king. He was a poor laborer in Nazareth.

The Bible calls him "just."
Which meant more than good.

It meant faithful. Steady.
Obedient to God-when it cost everything. 📸:Abs

He healed the sick.
He preached the Gospel.
He saw the face of God.

And he betrayed Him with a kiss.

This is the story of Judas Iscariot, and the terrifying truth most people ignore: 🧵👇 He wasn't just a villain in the shadows.
Judas was one of the Twelve.

Handpicked. Empowered. Trusted.

He failed, but
— Peter denied. The others fled.

What makes Judas different... is what came next.

It was more than 300 years of construction,

This is the Princes’ Chapel. Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence. 📸:Abs 👇 The dome was painted in 10 years, the work of Pietro Benvenuti, between 1828 and 1837.

- At the center of the dome: the Crucification.
- Around, scenes from Genesis to Revelation. 📸:Abs

She was the first to see the risen Christ.
But history called her a whore.
Erased her name.
Twisted her legacy.

This isn’t legend or gossip.
It’s the story of the most misunderstood woman in the Bible: Mary Magdalene. 🧵👇 Mary Magdalene wasn’t the woman who washed Jesus’ feet.
That woman is never named.

Magdalene came from Magdala, a wealthy town.
She had means.
She had demons.
And Jesus cast out seven of them. (Luke 8:2) 📸:Wiki

She died singing.

In Puccini’s opera Tosca, a murder happens right here, inside this Roman church.

But long before the drama, this place echoed of papal bloodlines and sacred power.

This is Sant’Andrea della Valle.
Where angels rise and men fall:🧵👇 It began with a woman and an ending.

In 1591, Duchess Costanza Piccolomini, the last of her powerful papal family, gave her palace to the Theatine order.

The land passed hands
But what rose from it was no ordinary church

It was a battlefield of art, faith, and ambition. 📸:Wiki

They used her, then burned her.
The king she crowned turned his back.
The Church she trusted called her a heretic.

At 19, Joan of Arc was executed-
Not for treason, but for being a fearless woman.

Here's what they don't tell you: 🧵👇 Joan was born in 1412, in a quiet French village.

She wasn't a wild-eyed mystic.
She was disciplined, devout, and deeply Catholic.

At 13, she heard a voice in the garden.
It was Saint Michael.

When the Archangel hit the bishop’s skull with a burning finger, a wonder was born.

— The Mont Saint-Michel.

It’s not just a church.
Not just an island.
Not even just a miracle.

Let me show you the true story: 🧵👇 In 708, the Archangel Michael appeared to Bishop Aubert in a dream.
He ignored it.
So Michael burned a hole in his skull.

The mark still exists. So does the mount he built. 📸: Wiki and Abs

Most come for the Duomo.
They leave thinking they’ve seen Milan.

But the soul of the city lives elsewhere—
in shadows, in ruins, in quiet corners the tourists miss.

Let me show you the Milan that doesn’t fit on a postcard. 🧵👇 Before it was Milan, it was Medhelanon.
A Celtic stronghold swallowed by Rome in 222 BCE.

By the 3rd century CE, it was the Western Empire’s capital.
Not Florence. Not Venice.
Mediolanum.

The heart of emperors.
The lungs of ancient trade.
📸:Abs

This isn’t just a myth.
It’s a mirror.

• Because it fails.
• Because it hurts.

Bernini sculpted a chase that ends in failure…
then lived one that ended in scandal.

He didn’t just imagine Apollo.
He became him.
Let me show you: 🧵👇 In Greece, he’s Apollon: god of sun and poetry.

In Rome, Apollo: master of arts.

She’s Daphne (Greek: “laurel”) or Dafne (Roman).

Eros/Cupid shot two arrows: love for him, rejection for her. 📸:Abs

The Church has a new Pope.
He’s American.
Augustinian.

Leo XIV didn’t rise without controversy.

To some, he’s a sign of continuity…
— To others, of decline.

Who is he? And why did this choice divide so many? Let me show you:🧵👇 Robert Francis Prevost was born in 1955 into a Catholic family.

French-Italian father, Hispanic-American mother.
From early on, he was surrounded by priests, altar, and Mass.

He entered the Augustinian seminary young.
Took his vows at 23.
And never left religious life.

He murdered his friend.
Took his wife.
Buried a child.

And was still called “a man after God’s own heart.”

How do you explain that?
The real story of King David will destroy your assumptions about power, sin, and redemption: 🧵👇 David wasn’t just a biblical hero.
He was a poet, a killer, a king, and a father of dynasties.
He united a kingdom…

—and tore his family apart.

But it’s what each religion did with his story that will haunt you. 📸:Abs

I visited the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena and wasn’t expecting this.

Hidden sculptures, golden relics, sacred icons, and some of the most underrated art in Italy.

Here are 15 striking images from inside the Palazzo that deserve more attention:🧵👇 1 - Ourino senese

Paz em cobre saltado gravado e parcialmente dourado, prata cinzelada e bulinada, esmaltes translúcidos e champlevé, final do século. XIV-início do século XV.

The woman who out-foxed a pope and still haunts Rome…”

Donna Olimpia, the ‘Papessa’.

She ran the Vatican’s deals, amassed a fortune,
—And legend says her ghost crosses the Tiber at night.

Want the full story? 🧵👇 In 1644 her brother-in-law became Pope Innocent X.

Overnight, the Pamphilj leapt from noble clan to papal dynasty,

— With Olimpia guarding every doorway to power. 📸:Abs

Think you know the Trevi Fountain?

It’s more than just a stunning monument.

— Under its marble, centuries of drama and Rome’s heartbeat..

Let’s explore: 🧵👇 It all begins with water.
Rome’s ancient survival depended on it.

In 19 BC, the Aqua Virgo aqueduct was built, led by a young virgin, according to legend.

It still feeds Trevi’s waters today.

You probably think St. Peter’s is Rome’s true cathedral.

It’s not.

The Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, the oldest church in the West, the highest in rank…

— And the sacred keeper of Peter and Paul’s skulls.
And there’s even more. 🧵👇 Built by Emperor Constantine in 318 AD after Christianity’s legalization, St. John Lateran quickly became the “Mater et Caput”

—Mother and Head of all churches.

It’s officially the Pope’s cathedral

Have you heard of the Colonna family?

Probably not.

But they’ve shaped Rome for over 800 years.

— Their palace, still inhabited today, is a hidden gem. 🧵👇 It all started in the 12th century, in a village near Rome named Colonna.

By the 14th century, they had built Palazzo Colonna on the Quirinal, one of Italy’s largest private palaces.

Most people have never heard of him.

But Cardinal Robert Sarah might be the most important voice in the Catholic Church right now.

He’s quiet. Traditional. And some think he could be the next Pope.

Let me tell you why that matters. 🧵 He was born in a small African village in Guinea in 1945.

His parents were poor farmers who converted to Christianity.
They raised him with discipline, silence, and prayer.

That’s where it all started.

None of them were born royal.
No titles. No palaces.

Yet they gave the world four popes. Two queens. Dozens of dukes.

They used faith to justify power.
Gold to buy the future.
And art to immortalize their name.

This is how the Medici saga begins. 🧵👇 They rose from the hills of Mugello…

— Farmers turned merchants, merchants turned bankers.

By the 1300s, they were weaving cloth.
By the 1400s, they were shaping kingdoms.

No crowns yet.
But the world was already bending around them.