Over the centuries, Italy has produced some of the most remarkable cultural works in the western canon, from the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri to Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel, from The Prince of Niccolo Machiavelli to the neo-realist films of Vittorio De Sica, and from Baldassarre Castiglione's The Courtier to the post-modernist novels of Italo Calvino.