Which of the following made Italy a great place to start an empire?

The correct answer is Renaissance

The period of the Renaissance, or Italian Renaissance, passed in Europe between the 14th and 16th centuries. It can be said that it was a transitional period between the Middle Ages and the Modern Age, which was marked by important changes in socio-cultural thinking, reflected in the economy, politics and religion. Jacob Burckhardt, in his book "The Culture of the Renaissance in Italy", written in 1867, clearly defines the term "Renaissance", as we understand it today. It is a period of "discovering the world and man". The return to the paradigms of Classical Antiquity, which brought humanism and naturalism as ideal, were the main guiding threads of an entire period of empirical and scientific flourishing of an era.