Ezzelino III da Romano (1194-1259) is best known to scholars of the Italian Middle Ages as one of the peninsula's most ruthless tyrants. Lord of Verona, Vicenza, Padua and Brescia, he lived in the golden age of the free Italian communes, but his reign was marked by brutality, intrigue and violence.

A loyal ally of Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire, Ezzelino became the armed arm of the imperial faction in Veneto and Lombardy, where he was charged with subduing the rebellious cities and restoring the loyalty of the Italian communes to the emperor, as northern Italy at the time was still under the yoke of the Germanic emperors. What distinguished this ruler from many of his contemporaries was the crudeness with which he achieved his political goals. During the repression of some popular uprisings in Padua in 1256, thousands of citizens were arrested. Ten thousand people were summarily executed, many of whom starved to death locked in tiny cells. In Verona, he built a veritable tower of death, where political prisoners were locked up in windowless cells without food or water.

Ezzelino did not even spare his allies: a suspicious and paranoid man, he had several of his relatives or old friends executed, suspected of conspiring against him. His end came in 1259, when a coalition of cities, led by the pope and the Guelph faction tired of his tyranny, decided to wage war against him. A bloody battle was fought near Cassano d'Adda that resulted in thousands of deaths and the final defeat of the tyrannical Ezzelino. Ezzelino was captured by his enemies and locked up in a narrow cell in the tower of Soncino. During the battle he sustained serious wounds, but refused treatment from any doctor, out of pride, and allowed himself to die slowly of starvation and mortal wounds.

The tyrant died in September 1259, marking the sad end of a life of cruelty and unbridled ambition.