A lecture by Catherine Fletcher (Swansea). Rai Uno’s new show I Medici – known in English as Medici: Masters of Florence – has proved an extraordinary success on Italian television. In this talk, Catherine Fletcher explores its depiction of the Medici family and the debate it has prompted about the relationship between historical fact and fiction. She draws on her own experience of writing a biography of Alessandro de’ Medici (Il principe maledetto di Firenze/The Black Prince of Florence) to consider the challenges of presenting this complex past to contemporary audiences, and looks at the ways that social media interaction can change viewers’ experience of historical TV.