Page 277 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Italy

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Florence

Florence is a vast and beautiful monument to the
Renaissance, the artistic and cultural reawakening
of the 15th century. Writers such as Dante, Petrarch
and Machiavelli contributed to its proud literary
heritage, though it was the paintings and sculptures
of artists such as Botticelli, Michelangelo and Donatello
that turned the city into one of the world’s greatest
artistic capitals.

While the Etruscans had long settled in almost unbroken sway for three centuries.
the hills around Fiesole, Florence first During this time the city was at the
sprang to life as a Roman colony in 59 BC. cultural and intellectual heart of Europe,
Captured by the Lombards in the 6th its cosmopolitan atmosphere and wealthy
century, the city later emerged from the patrons providing the impetus for a period
Dark Ages as an independent city state. of unparalleled artistic growth. Artists,
By the 13th century a burgeoning trade sculptors and architects flocked to the city,
in wool and textiles, backed by a powerful filling its streets, churches and palaces
banking sector, had turned the city into with some of the world’s greatest
one of Italy’s leading powers. Political Renaissance works. By 1737 the Medici
control was wielded first by the guilds, had died out, leaving the city under
and later by the Florentine Republic. Austrian (and briefly Napoleonic) control
In time, power passed to leading noble until Italian Unification in 1860. Between
families, of which the most influential 1865 and 1871 Florence was the capital
were the Medici, a hugely wealthy of the new Kingdom of Italy. The historic
banking dynasty. Florence, and later streets and artistic heritage were ravaged
Tuscany, remained under the family’s by the Arno floods of November 1966.

Florentines strolling in front of Ponte Vecchio (1345), the old bridge lined with shops spanning the Arno
A replica of Michelangelo’s David in Piazza della Signoria

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