<P> As the calendar reached the year 1500, Europe was blossoming--with Leonardo da Vinci painting his Mona Lisa portrait not long after Christopher Columbus reached the Americas (1492), Amerigo Vespucci proofed that America is not a part of India and hence the new world derived from his name, the Portuguese navigator Vasco Da Gama sailed around Africa into the Indian Ocean and Michelangelo completed his paintings of Old Testament themes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome (the expense of such artistic exuberance did much to spur the likes of Martin Luther in Northern Europe in their protests against the Church of Rome). </P> <P> For the first time in European history, events North of the Alps and on the Atlantic Coast were taking centre stage . Important artists of this period included Bosch, Dürer, and Breugel . In Spain Miguel de Cervantes wrote the novel Don Quixote, other important works of literature in this period were the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and Le Morte d'Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory . The most famous playwright of the era was the Englishman William Shakespeare whose sonnets and plays (including Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth) are considered some of the finest works ever written in the English language . </P> <P> Meanwhile, the Christian kingdoms of northern Iberia continued their centuries - long fight to reconquer the peninsula from its Muslim rulers . In 1492, the last Islamic stronghold, Granada, fell, and Iberia was divided between the Christian kingdoms of Spain and Portugal . Iberia's Jewish and Muslim minorities were forced to convert to Catholicism or be exiled . The Portuguese immediately looked to expand outward sending expeditions to explore the coasts of Africa and engage in trade with the mostly Muslim powers on the Indian Ocean, making Portugal wealthy . In 1492, a Spanish expedition of Christopher Columbus discovered the Americas during an attempt to find a western route to East Asia . </P> <P> From the East, however, the Ottoman Turks under Suleiman the Magnificent continued their advance into the heart of Christian Europe--besieging Vienna in 1529 . </P>

What took place during the classical era that improved basically every area of life