Enlightenment is one of the most important and complex cultural movements of the modern era. The Enlightenment ideology is based on the ideas of the philosophical empiricism created by British intellectuals and then achieved the highest point of expansion in France, where the greatest French scholars wrote and published the Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts. With the publishing of the Encyclopaedia, a new way of perceprion toward society was born and spread throughout Europe, and especially Milan, in Lombardy, where Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri became famous for their work. In this thesis the therm enlightenment is defined and explained, how was created and it's expansion in Italy, more precisely in Milan, Lombardy. The issue of the existing laws will be pointed out, as well as the death penalty and the use of torture, that has been present and actively used since Medieval times to obtain confessions that not always were true and sincere. Afterwards the argument will be moved on to the enlightenment in the Lombardy region, with Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri, the two most important exponents of the Italian enlightenment. Their contribution to, not only the Italian society, but European in general was huge. With their most important works On Crimes and Punishments and Observations on Torture, they create a new way of thinking towards society and an individual's life. For them someone's life is not a joke and the State is not to be allowed to kill anyone for a committed crime. Any sentence should be evaluated in a rightful and ethical way and each it should have a limit that must be settled by law. Thanks to this ideology; that fights for a change of the existing laws to protect and respect the lifes of each and every single citizen, throughout Europe, every single state started to ban the death penalty and the use of torture, or at least change the existing laws to make them more "human".