Giovanni Boccaccio wrote The Decameron around 1353, after the 1348 to 1349 Black Death had killed more than half the population of Florence. The book's frame story has seven women and three men flee the city and shelter in a villa in the countryside. Each evening they take turns as king or queen and set a theme, and each tells a story, for ten days and one hundred tales in total. The stories range from knights and lovers to tricksters and clergy, and draw on classical, local, and Eastern sources. Boccaccio's own introduction describes the plague's horrors in plain detail, including the burials that were carried out with no ceremony. The contrast between the stories and the disaster outside is the core of the book's design.

Hampi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Karnataka, India, with more than 1,600 surviving remains spread over 4,100 hectares. It was the capital of the Vijayanagara Empire from 1336 to 1565. Travellers from Persia and Portugal described it as a prosperous, wealthy and grand city with temples, markets and farms along the Tungabhadra River. By 1500 it was estimated to be the world's second-largest city after Beijing, and probably India's richest at the time. In 1565 a coalition of Muslim sultanates defeated the Vijayanagara Empire, its capital was conquered and destroyed, and the city was left in ruins. Hampi remains a religious centre, with the active Virupaksha Temple at its heart.