1599
Globe Theatre Opens
The Lord Chamberlain's Men, having dismantled their old theater and ferried its timbers across the frozen Thames, opened the Globe Theatre on Bankside in Southwark. Twenty feet from a bearbaiting pit and surrounded by brothels, the new round wooden O would host the first productions of Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear.
Shah Abbas Moves Capital to Isfahan
Shah Abbas I transferred the Safavid capital from Qazvin to Isfahan, a strategic move south away from Ottoman threats. He planned a new royal square, the Naqsh-e Jahan, ringed with tiled mosques, caravanserais, and a royal palace. Isfahan nesf-e jahan, Isfahan is half the world, the saying went. The Chahar Bagh boulevard, lined with gardens and reflecting pools, became one of the Islamic world's most celebrated urban spaces.
Dutch Reach Mauritius
A Dutch squadron under Admiral Jacob van Neck landed on the uninhabited Indian Ocean island of Mauritius and named it after Prince Maurice of Nassau. They feasted on flightless dodos and turtles. Within a century the dodo would be extinct, and Mauritius would have become a minor stopover for the VOC.
Caravaggio Paints the Calling of Saint Matthew
A violent young Lombard painter named Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio completed his Calling of Saint Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel in Rome. Jesus pointed through a shaft of dusty tavern light at a tax collector counting coins. European painting, suddenly and for good, had fallen under a new and brutal spell.
Earl of Essex Fails in Ireland
Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, crossed to Ireland with sixteen thousand men to crush the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill. Instead he negotiated an unauthorized truce, abandoned his command, and galloped back to England to burst, mud-spattered, into Elizabeth's bedchamber. The queen never forgave him, and his ruin followed within two years.
London Population Passes 200,000
The population of London surpassed two hundred thousand inhabitants, making it one of the largest cities in Europe. It had more than doubled during Elizabeth's reign, straining its timber houses, its grain markets, and its sewers. Playhouses, printing shops, and merchant adventurers all profited from the crowd. The growth strained medieval infrastructure, producing overcrowding, plague, and the vibrant cultural ferment that powered Elizabethan England.
Spanish Art Flourishes in Seville
In Seville, the entrepot for American silver, a new generation of painters including Francisco Pacheco was training apprentices who would shape the Spanish Golden Age. Young Diego Velazquez, not yet born, would enter this workshop within twelve years and absorb its mixture of Italian Mannerism and austere Spanish religious devotion.