FLORENCE

 Elegant and bright, Florence stretches along the banks of the Arno, surrounded by gently rolling hills and rounded. Unique in the world for the monumental grandeur of its buildings and the refined elegance of the urban fabric, the City of Flower preserves the harmonious grace given to her by the Renaissance masters. Beside remains vivid and tenacious, the character of its inhabitants, resourceful and closed, moved by the taste of the prank, proud of their past and of their city. From the suburbs of Florence, from the local markets teeming with life and the craft workshops have emerged its greatest men, those who were able to give luster marking the vertices of Fine Arts For obvious reasons we can not here give account of the immense artistic heritage, historical and architecture of Florence, we limit ourselves to offer you some ideas and invite you to visit it.

I do not have precise information on the origins of the city, but presumably the first human settlements date back to the tenth century BC, when some of the Italic peoples settled in the plain of the Arno. At the end of the eighth century they disappeared, probably due to the Etruscans who lived in the hills of Fiesole, controlling the Mugnone valley. Between the third and second centuries BC, the Romans conquered the Florentine territory by using the fortified center of Fiesole and other Etruscan settlements.In the first century BC the soldiers of Caesar founded Florentia, which became an important commercial and military hub, thanks to the central location which made it a crossroads of great strategic importance. In this period when the city was enriched with imperial monuments and chessboard-shaped streets that still form the heart of the city center, around Piazza della Repubblica.

With the decline of the Roman Empire and the arrival of the barbarians, Florentia followed, as many other Italian cities, was invaded and looted, suffered from epidemics and famines touching historic lows in terms of number of inhabitants and was downgraded by the Byzantines to a sort of entrenched military zone. Only with the Lombards, who moved the headquarters of the Brand from Lucca to Florence, walked economic recovery and commercial city, a period of prosperity that will last a long time.From the High Middle Ages, the rapid economic growth and commercial center of Florence is conjugated with the military superiority that, after bloody battles, ended up getting a political supremacy in Tuscany. The continuous wars against other Tuscan cities did nothing but encourage the consolidation of Florentine prosperity, supported by the development of handicraft production, with the birth of the corporations of Arts and Crafts, and the great financial power of its banks. The bitter conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, emblematic of the spirit that has always biased the city, settled down in favor of the Guelphs when Matilde of Canossa decided in favor of Pope Gregory VII, vying with Henry IV to the papal throne. Consolidated the power of Guelph, was founded the Florentine Republic which entrusted the government of the city consoles together with a city council and the Parliament, one of the first examples of civil and democratic institutions in Europe.

The Middle Ages Florence was marked by bloody struggles between Guelphs and Ghibellines against the backdrop of conflict between the papacy and the empire: in this period the city to conquer the whole territory of Tuscany, dominating Arezzo, Lucca, Pistoia, Siena, Poggibonsi and Volterra.In the fourteenth century the Florentine power was reduced by Lucca and Pisa in Altopascio in Montecatini, but in the next century the supremacy of Florence reached its highest peak, thanks to the rise and consolidation of a new ruling class.The fifteenth century is the century of the Medici, who came from the Florentine banking system which had managed to grow the economic fortunes of the city. It was with the Medici and Florence became the world capital of the arts flourished under their dominion painting and sculpture, literature and music, the city took on a role as a cultural guide that no one would deleted.After the death of the last Medici, Florence passed to the Lorena. They followed the Napoleonic period and the Unification of Italy.Hit by the violence in Florence several times: the bombings of World War II did not spare the old town, and in 1966 a terrible coincidence of bad luck and irresponsibility provoked a devastating flood of the Arno, which inundated the city causing damage to the priceless historic and artistic heritage.

In 1993 an attack mafia destroyed with dynamite the Tower of the Pulci, the seat of the Accademia dei Georgofili, seriously damaging the nearby Uffizi Gallery. Florence has been hit hard and frequently, but no one has ever managed to bend it, much less to discourage the Florentines who, with the resourcefulness that always distinguishes them, they did not lose time and have rolled up their sleeves to restore the splendor that that violence, evil enemy of beauty and the arts, had tried to erase.

FLORENCE

BORGO BUCCIANO, San Miniato