| 1100–1532 | South America [administration] | The Inca empire dominates the Andes region of South America. Its population numbers as many as 12 million. Incan society is based on a strict hierarchy, with an emperor who rules with absolute power. Their religion is based on sun-worship, and they are skilled builders who create a system of roads and irrigation. |
| c. 1500 | South America [architecture] | The Inca town of Machu Picchu, built high in the mountains of Peru, reaches its final stage of building. |
| 1500 | Germany [fiction] | The anonymous Till Eulenspiegel/The Owl Mirror is first printed, in Lübeck, Germany. This is the first printed example of the German Schwank (‘Farce’), a form of comic tale that developed in medieval Germany. |
| 1500 | England [information technology] | English printer Wynkyn de Worde establishes the first press in Fleet Street, London, England. The street will become synonymous with printing and newspapers. |
| 1500 | Swiss Confederation [medicine] | Swiss doctor and sow gelder Jacob Nufer performs the first recorded Caesarean operation on a living woman, helping his wife to give birth safely. |
| 1500 | Germany [painting] | The German artist Albrecht Dürer paints Self-portrait (the Munich self-portrait). |
| 1500 | Italy, Rome, Flanders [sculpture] | The Italian artist Michelangelo (Buonarroti) completes his sculptures the St Peter's Pietà and Madonna and Child (Bruges Madonna). |
| 1500 | Netherlands [thought and scholarship] | Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus publishes Adagia in Paris, France. One of the most widely read books of the century, it consists of Greek and Latin proverbs, with comments, opinions, quotations, and long commentaries by Erasmus. An English translation appears in 1539. |
| 24 February 1500 | Holy Roman Empire, Spain, Austria [births and deaths] | Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 1519–56, King of Spain as Charles I 1516–56, and Archduke of Austria as Charles I 1519–21, born in Ghent (–1558). |
| 2 July 1500 | Holy Roman Empire, Germany [political events] | An edict of the Diet (legislative assembly) of Augsburg establishes the Reichsregiment, a ruling council of the Holy Roman Empire, with representatives from the three colleges of electors, princes, and cities, following the scheme of the archbishop of Mainz and imperial arch-chancellor Berthold of Henneberg. Germany is to be divided into six administrative ‘circles’; this number increases in 1512. |
| 20 July 1500 | Spain, Portugal [political events] | Dom Miguel, the infant heir to the kingdoms of Spain and Portugal, dies, dashing the hopes of his grandparents King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile for a union of these kingdoms and leaving Joanna (‘the Mad’) and Philip (‘the Handsome’), Archduke of Austria and Duke of Burgundy, heirs to Spain. |
| 10 October 1500 | Portugal, Spain [political events] | King Manuel I of Portugal marries the infanta Maria of Spain, sister of his dead wife and fourth daughter of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, whose hopes of a dynastic union of the kingdoms are thus revitalized. |
| 1 November 1500 | Florence [births and deaths] | Benvenuto Cellini, Florentine sculptor, goldsmith and author, a leading Mannerist artist, whose best-known sculpture is Perseus, born in Florence, Italy (–1571). |
| 11 November 1500 | France, Spain, Naples [treaties] | The secret Treaty of Granada between King Louis XII of France and King Ferdinand II of Aragon provides for the conquest and partition of the kingdom of Naples; France is to have the northern half; the Abruzzi, the Terra di Lavoro, and the city of Naples, and Spain is to have Apulia and Calabria. |
