What Did They Eat: Renaissance Princes, Popes and Paupers

The food that fed history’s greatest classical rebirth

An extravagant banquet — Paolo Veronese, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Renaissance was more than a rebirth of classic culture across Europe. It was also a time of great change, both socially and economically, with a new generation of nouveau riche emerging into a world of ancient noble bloodlines. These families — mostly famously the Medici…