The Trecento (Italian for 300, short for "mille trecento," 1300) refers to the fourteenth century in Italian cultural history.

Commonly the Trecento is considered to be the beginning of the Renaissance in art history.

Painters of the Trecento include Giotto di Bondone, as well as painters of the Sienese School, which becomse the most important in Italy during the century, including Duccio di Buoninsegna, Simone Martini, Lippo Memmi, Ambrogio Lorenzetti and his brother Pietro.

Important sculptors include wo pupils of Giovanni Pisano: Arnolfo di Cambio and Tino di Camaino, and Bonino da Campione.The Trecento is also famous as a time of heightened literary activity, with writers working in the vernacular instead of Latin.

Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio are the leading writers of the age.

Dante producea his famous La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), a summation of the medieval worldview, and Petrarch writes verse in a lyrical style influenced by the Provençal poetry of the troubadours.In music, the Trecento is a time of vigorous activity in Italy, as it is in France, with which there as a frequent interchange of musicians and influences.

Distinguishing the period from the preceding century is an emphasis on secular song, especially love lyrics; much of the surviving music is polyphonic, but the influence of the troubadours who came to Italy, fleeing the Albigensian Crusade in the early thirteenth century, is evident.

In contrast to the artistic and literary achievements of the century, Trecento music (at least in written form) flourishes in the second half of the century, and the period is often extended (especially in English-language scholarship) into the first decades of the fifteenth century, as a so-called "Long Trecento."

Musicians and composers of the Trecento include the renowned Francesco Landini, as well as Maestro Piero, Gherardello da Firenze, Jacopo da Bologna, Giovanni da Cascia, Paolo "Tenorista" da Firenze, Niccolò da Perugia, Bartolino da Padova, Antonio Zachara da Teramo, Matteo da Perugia, and Johannes Ciconia.