Nicola Pisano completes a pulpit for Pisa, borrowing details from Roman sarcophagi - an early example of a new interest in the classical past

The Italian communes employ powerful leaders, or signori, in a trend which leads away from oligarchy and towards princely rule

The bankers of northern Italy develop a method of accountancy - double-entry book-keeping - which will have lasting significance

Dante, a member of the White faction in Florence, is sentenced to death by the Blacks - and never returns to his native city

Enrico degli Scrovegni employs Giotto to paint the cycle of frescoes in his chapel in Padua

Dante, in exile from Florence, begins work on The Divine Comedy - completing it just before his death, 14 years later

The cathedral authorities in Siena commission from Duccio the great altarpiece which becomes known as the Maestà

Clement V moves the papacy to Avignon, in a move which is expected to be temporary but which lasts for nearly seventy years

Florence becomes a centre of international finance, with the Bardi and Peruzzi families acting as bankers to Europe's rulers

Petrarch glimpses Laura in a church in Avignon and falls helplessly in love with her - or so he tells us

A laurel wreath is placed on the brow of Petrarch in Rome, in a renewal of interest in the classical world

The bridge now known as Ponte Vecchio is constructed in Florence (replacing an older old bridge)

Edward III of England, defaulting on his massive debts, drives the Florentine banking families of Bardi and Peruzzi into bankruptcy

Cola di Rienzo, appointed tribune of the people, enjoys a few months of dictatorial powers in Rome before the citizens tire of him

Boccaccio begins his Decameron, supposedly the stories told by young Florentine men and women sheltering from the Black Death

Armies of mercenaries, led by condottieri, conduct Italian warfare at an often extortionate rate

Humanism, or the study of classical literature as a living tradition, develops into one of the main strands of the Renaissance

Boccaccio, visiting Petrarch in Florence, is inspired to devote himself to the pursuit of classical studies

A great clock is completed in Padua, regulated mechanically by foliot and escapement

The papal curia returns to Rome in what would seem a conclusive move if there were not, two years later, two popes - one of them elected back in Avignon

John Hawkwood, a condottiere in command of the White Company, is appointed captain general of Florence

The French cardinals, objecting to the new Italian pope, elect their own man as Clement VII - and thus inaugurate the Great Schism of the papacy

The Venetian blockade of Chioggia costs Genoa her fleet and ends Genoese rivalry with Venice in the eastern Mediterranean

Gian Galeazzo Visconti, the signore of Milan, sets about enlarging his territory - seizing Vicenza, Verona and Padua between 1384 and 1388

Philip II of Burgundy commissions from Netherlands sculptor Claus Sluter a work, the Well of Moses, which launches the northern Renaissance