Rome Exhibit: Machiavelli’s “The Prince” Turns 500

The most translated book from the Italian language, The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli celebrates its 500th birthday this year with a special exhibit in Rome. The exhibition “Niccolò Machiavelli: The Prince and His Times 1513-2013″ runs through June 16th at Rome’s Vittoriano Museum Complex. Its six parts trace Machiavelli and his times, the impact of The Prince through today and how its meaning has been used and abused.

According to NPR (check out their special segment on the exhibit), “Few works of world literature have had so many diverging interpretations, and some of them are projected on a wall of the exhibit. The philosopher Spinoza was convinced The Prince was a warning to men of what tyrants were capable of; Francis Bacon thought Machiavelli a realist unfettered by Utopian fantasies; Karl Marx considered Machiavelli’s work a genuine masterpiece. Bertrand Russell called The Prince a handbook for gangsters.”