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We investigate the historical determinants of the education gender gap in Italy in the late nineteenth century, immediately following the country’s Unification. We use a comprehensive newly-assembled database including 69 provinces over twenty-year sub-samples covering the 1861-1901 period. We explore the effect of economic factors such as contemporaneous measures of income and industrialization, institutional factors captured by the past domination prior to Unification, and sociocultural factors associated with medieval family types. We find that female primary-school attainment, relative to that of males, is positively influenced by the medieval pattern of commerce, along the routes that connected Italian cities among themselves and with the rest of the world. The positive effect of medieval commerce is particularly strong at the non-compulsory upper-primary level.