FLORENCE

Capital of the region of Tuscany, has a population of around half a million inhabitants, spreads on the banks of the Arno, between the Adriatic and the Tyrrhenian seas, almost in the middle of the Italian peninsula. It is a city which bustles with industry and craft, commerce and culture, art and science. Being on the main national railway lines, it is easily accessible from most important places both in Italy and abroad. The Florence "Vespucci" airport, where both national and international airlines stop, is located 5 Km. from the city centre. The main motorway, A1, connects Florence with Bologna and Milano in the North and Rome and Naples in the South. The motorway A11 to the sea joins it to Prato, Pistoia, Montecatini, Lucca, Pisa and all the resorts on the Tyrrhenian sea. There is also motorway which connects Florence to Siena. The climate is temperate but rather variable, with breezy winters and hot summers.

HISTORY 

Although Florence was founded in ancient times, it was of little importance before the 11th century. By the second half of that century it was governed by a council composed of nobles and learned men that nominally functioned in the name of the people, thus making the city a republic. In the 12th century the Florentines captured the nearby town of Fiesole and began their attempt to conquer all the broad, fertile plain drained by the Arno. Internally the republic was divided by the struggle of its leading families for power, and in 1300 civil war broke out in Florence between two Guelph factions, the Neri (Blacks) and Bianchi (Whites). Dante, one of the defeated Bianchi, was exiled from the city in 1302. Despite its internal strife, the city prospered. Industry—especially woolen-cloth manufacturing—and banking, through which many Florentines later amassed great fortunes, were added to an ever-expanding commerce. In addition, the organization of merchants and artisans into powerful guilds gave the city an unexpected measure of stability. The wool guild, the richest of all, employed some 30,000 workers and owned 200 shops at the beginning of the 14th century. Merchants and bankers thus took a commanding lead in civic affairs and began to beautify the city. The republic warred repeatedly with Milan in the 14th and 15th centuries; in 1406 it finally acquired Pisa, downstream on the Arno, thus winning a long-coveted outlet to the sea. Considerable friction had developed meanwhile between the workers, who felt themselves exploited, and the wealthy classes. The conflict came to a head in 1433, when the aristocratic party exiled Cosimo de’ Medici, a wealthy merchant-banker and the leader of the popular party. Cosimo returned in 1434, exiled his opponents, and in alliance with the poorer classes became the real ruler of the republic, although remaining nominally a private citizen. The Medici dominated the city, except for brief periods of exile, during the next three centuries. Cosimo was succeeded by his son Piero and his grandson Lorenzo de’ Medici, called Lorenzo the Magnificent, a great patron of learning and the arts. Lorenzo reduced the republican government to a shadow and by an ambitious foreign policy succeeded for a time in making Florence the balance of power among Italian states. The Florentine gold coin, the florin, became the standard of trade throughout Europe, and the commerce of Florence embraced the known world. The great flowering of Renaissance art in architecture, painting, and sculpture took place within little more than the span of the 15th century. Lorenzo’s son and successor, Piero, made humiliating concessions to King Charles VIII of France, who invaded Italy in 1494; in that year the outraged populace drove Piero and his family from the city. Girolamo Savonarola, prior of the Dominican monastery of San Marco, emerged as the leading personality in Florence after Piero’s downfall. Savonarola, however, who had long inveighed against the luxury of Lorenzo’s court, came into conflict with the pope and gradually lost popular favor. In 1498 he was seized by a mob, tried, and executed. The Medici, returned to power by a Spanish army in 1512, were again exiled in 1527, and permanently restored in 1531. The title grand duke of Tuscany was bestowed on the head of the Medici family by the pope in 1569. The Medici ruled Tuscany until their line died out in 1737. They were succeeded by members of the imperial Austrian house of Habsburg-Lorraine. Grand Duke Ferdinand III was driven from his throne by the French in 1799 and restored in 1814. His successor, Leopold II, expelled in 1849, returned with Austrian troops, but he was finally deposed in 1859, during the struggle for Italian independence. Florence was the capital of Italy under King Victor Emmanuel from 1865 to 1871, when Rome became the capital. In World War II most of Florence’s monuments were not damaged, but all its bridges (except the Ponte Vecchio) were destroyed in 1944. In 1966 a major flood damaged numerous art treasures in Florence, but many were restored in succeeding years by the use of sophisticated techniques.