Italian nobility

The Nobility of Italy comprises individuals and their families of the Italian peninsula, and the islands linked with it, recognized by sovereigns, such as the Holy Roman Emperor, the Holy See, the Kings of Italy, and certain other Italian kings and sovereigns, as members of a class of persons officially enjoying hereditary privileges which distinguished them from other persons and families. They often held lands as fiefs and were sometimes endowed with hereditary titles or nobiliary particles. From the Middle Ages until 1861, "Italy" was not a single country but was a number of separate kingdoms and other states, with many reigning dynasties. These were often related through marriage to each other and to other European royal families.

Before Italian Unification there was a relatively large nobility in Italy.

Indeed, in the mid-19th century, the existence of the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (before 1816: the Kingdom of Naples and the Kingdom of Sicily), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Duchy of Modena, the Duchy of Savoy, the Duchy of Milan, the Papal States, various republics and the Austrian and French dependencies in Northern Italy led to parallel nobilities with different traditions and rules.

16th-, 17th- and 18th-century Italy (after the Renaissance) was home to myriad noble families that had risen to prominence via judicial appointment, election to the various regional senates or appointment to Catholic Church office.

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