Editing Ferrara (section)

===Late modern and contemporary===
Ferrara, a university city second only to Bologna, remained a part of the [[Papal States]] for almost 300 years, an era marked by a steady decline; in 1792 the population of the town was only 27,000, less than in the 17th century.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hearder|first1=Harry|title=Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento: 1790–1870|date=1994|publisher=Longman |location=London|isbn=978-0582491465|page=96|edition=7th}}</ref> In 1805–1814 it was briefly part of the [[Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)|Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy]], a [[client-state]] of the [[First French Empire|French Empire]]. After the 1815 [[Congress of Vienna]], Ferrara was given back to the Pope, now guaranteed by the [[Empire of Austria]]. A [[bastion fort]] was erected in the 1600s by [[Pope Paul V]] on the site the [[Castel Tedaldo]], an old castle at the south-west angle of the town, this was occupied by an [[Empire of Austria|Austrian]] garrison from 1832 until 1859. The fortress was completely dismantled following the [[birth of the Kingdom of Italy]] and the bricks were used for new constructions throughout the town.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Boone|first1=Marc|last2=Stabel|first2=Peter|trans-title=Shaping Urban Identity in Late Medieval Europe |title=L'apparition d'une identité urbaine dans l'Europe du bas moyen age |date=2000 |publisher=Garant |location=Leuven |isbn=978-9044110920 |page=169}}</ref>
[[File:Piazza cattedrale monumento Vittorio Emanuele II Ferrara inizio 1900.jpg|thumb|Downtown Ferrara around 1900]]
During the last decades of the 1800s and the early 1900s, Ferrara remained a modest trade centre for its large rural hinterland that relied on commercial crops such as [[sugar beet]] and [[industrial hemp]]. Large [[land reclamation]] works were carried out for decades with the aim to expand the available [[arable land]] and eradicate [[malaria]] from the wetlands along the Po delta.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Foot|first1=John|title=Modern Italy|date=2014|isbn=978-0230360334|page=151|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |edition=Second}}</ref> Mass industrialisation came to Ferrara only at the end of the 1930s with the set-up of a chemical plant by the Fascist regime that should have supplied the regime with [[synthetic rubber]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Zamagni|first1=Vera|title=The Economic History of Italy, 1860–1990: From the Periphery to the Centre|date=1993|publisher=Clarendon Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0198287735|page=280|edition=Reprint}}</ref> During the [[Second World War]] Ferrara was repeatedly bombed by Allied warplanes that targeted and destroyed railway links and industrial facilities. After the war, the industrial area in [[Pontelagoscuro]] was expanded to become a giant petrochemical compound operated by [[Edison (company)|Montecatini]] and other companies, that at its peak employed 7,000 workers and produced 20% of [[plastics]] in Italy.<ref>{{cite book|title=Ferrara e il suo Petrolchimico il Lavoro e il Territorio Storia, Cultura e Proposta (in Italian)|date=2006|publisher=Cds Edizioni|location=Ferrara|isbn=978-88-95014-00-5}}</ref> In recent decades, as part of a general trend in Italy and Europe, Ferrara has come to rely more on tertiary and tourism, while the heavy industry, still present in the town, has been largely phased out.

After almost 450 years, [[2012 Northern Italy earthquakes|another earthquake]] struck Ferrara in May 2012 causing only limited damage to the historic buildings of the town and no victims.