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FLORENCE (Italian: Firenze) is the capital city
of Tuscany. From 1865 to 1870 the city was also
the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Florence
lies on the Arno River and has a population of
around 400,000 people plus a suburban population
of over of 200,000.
A centre of medieval European trade and finance,
the city is often considered to be the birthplace
of the Italian Renaissance and was long ruled by
the Medici family. Florence is also famous for
its fine art and architecture. It is said that,
of the 1,000 most important European artists of
the second millennium, 350 lived or worked in
Florence. The city has also been called the
Athens of the Middle Ages.
Florence's recorded history began with the
establishment in 59 BC of a settlement called
Florentia (May She Flourish) designed to house
former Roman former soldiers. .They built a
castrum in a chessboard pattern of an army camp
(castrum) with the main streets intersecting at
the present Piazza della Repubblica. Florentia
was situated on the Via Cassia, the main route
between Rome and the North. Emperor Diocletian
made Florentia capital of the province of Tuscia
in the 3rd century AD.
St Minias was Florence’s first martyr. He
was beheaded at about 250 AD, during the
anti-Christian persecutions led by the Emperor
Decius. From around the beginning of the 4th
century AD, the city experienced turbulent
periods during which the city was often besieged
and ravaged. The population may have fallen to as
few as 1,000 persons.
Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th
century. Conquered by Charlemagne in 774,
Florence became part of the duchy of Tuscany with
Lucca as capital. Population began to grow again
and commerce prospered. Margrave Hugo chose
Florence as his residency in about 1000 AD. This
initiated the Golden Age of Florentine art. In
1013, construction began on the Basilica di San
Miniato al Monte. The exterior of the baptistry
was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and
1128.
Political conflict in the 13th century did not
prevent the city's rise to become one of the most
powerful and prosperous in Europe, assisted by
her own strong gold currency, the eclipse of her
formerly powerful rival Pisa and the exercise of
power by the mercantile elite.
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Of a population estimated at 80,000 before the
Black Death of 1348, about 25,000 are said to
have been supported by the city's wool industry.
Florence came under the sway (1382-1434) of the
Albizzi family, bitter rivals of the Medici.
Cosimo de' Medici was the first Medici family
member to essentially control the city from
behind the scenes. Although the city was
technically a democracy of sorts, his power came
from a vast patronage network along with his
alliance to the new immigrants, the gente nuova.
The fact that the Medici were bankers to the pope
also contributed to their rise. Cosimo was
succeeded by his son Piero, who was shortly
thereafter succeeded by Cosimo's grandson,
Lorenzo in 1469. Lorenzo was a great patron of
the arts, commissioning works by Michelangelo,
Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli.
Following his death in 1492, Lorenzo was
succeeded by his son Piero II. When the French
king Charles VIII invaded northern Italy, Piero
II chose to resist his army. But when he realised
the size of the French army at the gates of Pisa,
he had to accept to accept the humiliating
conditions of the French king. These made the
Florentines rebel and they expelled Piero II.
With his exile in 1494 and the restoration of a
republican government the first period of Medici
rule ended
During this period the dominican monk Girolamo
Savonarola had become prior of the San Marco
monastery in 1490. He was famed for his
penitential sermons. He later blamed the exile of
the Medicis as the work of God, punishing them
for their decadence. He seized the opportunity to
carry through political reforms leading to a more
democratic rule. His monomaniacal persecution of
various worldly pleasures in Florence both
influenced and foreshadowed many of the wider
religious controversies of the following
centuries. Savonarola publicly accused Pope
Alexander VI of corruption and he was
subsequently banned from speaking in public.
Later, when he broke this ban, he was
excommunicated. The Florentines, tired of his
extreme teachings, turned against him and
arrested him. He was convicted as a heretic and
burned at the stake on the Piazza della Signoria
on 23 May 1498.
A second individual of unusual insight was
Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions
for Florence's regeneration under his strong
leadership have often been seen as a
legitimisation of political expediency and even
malpractice. Commissioned by the Medici,
Machiavelli also wrote the Florentine Histories,
a history of the city.
Florentines drove out the Medici for a second
time and re-established a republic on May 16,
1527. Restored twice with the support of both
Emperor and Pope, the Medici in 1537 became
hereditary dukes of Florence, and in 1569 Grand
Dukes of Tuscany, ruling for two centuries. In
Tuscany, only the Republic of Lucca (later a
Duchy) was independent of Florence.
The extinction of the Medici line and the
accession in 1737 of Francis Stephen, duke of
Lorraine and husband of Maria Theresa of Austria,
led to Tuscany's inclusion into the territories
of the Austrian crown. Austrian rule was to end
in defeat at the hands of France and the kingdom
of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1859, and Tuscany became
a province of the united kingdom of Italy in
1861.
Florence replaced Turin as Italy's capital in
1865, hosting the country's first parliament, but
was superseded by Rome six years later, after the
withdrawal of the French troops made its addition
to the kingdom possible
. After doubling during the 19th century,
Florence's population tripled in the 20th with
the growth of tourism, trade, financial services
and industry. During World War II the city
experienced a year-long German occupation
(1943-1944). The Allied soldiers who died driving
the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries
outside the city.
In November 1966 the Arno flooded parts of the
centre, damaging many art treasures. There was no
warning from the authorities who knew the flood
was coming, except a phone call to the jewellers
on the Ponte Vecchio.
Although the origins of the first Franciscan
oratory are still lost in the mists of time, the
construction of the new Basilica of Santa Croce
(left) is well documented. It was
officially started on May 3rd 1294, when the
architect, Arnolfo di Cambio, laid the first
stone of what was to become a masterpiece of
Gothic art. His design was based on 'spatial
grandiosity, with the structural elements carried
out with rational clarity and sobriety'.
When the church was finished in 1442, it was
consecrated by Pope Eugene IV. The facade was
left undecorated. (In fact it was not completed
until 1857-63, more or less at the same time as
the Belltower was rebuilt to replace the original
one which had been struck by lightning.)
Architectural additions were introduced thanks to
the patronage of Cosimo "the Elder" de' Medici
and Andrea de' Pazzi. The former had the Chapel
of the Novitiate built next to the Sacristy in
1434-45 by Michelozzo. It was decorated by Andrea
della Robbia and Mino da Fiesole. The latter
sponsored the Pazzi Chapel (in the first cloister
or 'Cloister of the Dead') which was designed by
Filippo Brunelleschi and started in around 1430.
(See next page)
Brunelleschi also designed the second Cloister of
the Convent, or Greater Cloister, continued after
his death by Bernardo Rossellino (1453 circa)
with a fine entrance door (1450 circa) by
Benedetto da Maiano. Rather out of place in this
substantially Gothic ambience, the Niccolini
Chapel (situated in the left transept) dates from
a later period and was carried out in around 1570
by the architect Giovanni Antonio Dosio. Giorgio
Vasari was "remodernizing" the basilica for the
Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici more or less in
the same period (1566-1584). This was when the
huge altars we can see on the walls in the side
naves were built, all of them enriched with
religious paintings carried out by the finest
Florentine painters of the period.
The presence of so many funeral monuments and
tombstones (276 can still be seen on the
cathedral floor alone!) has led to the Basilica
being thought of as the city Pantheon, the burial
place of Florence's most illustrious citizens.
Here lie the tombs of Taddeo Gaddi and Count
Ugolino della Gherardesca. Other famous inmates
include Michelangelo (tomb by Vasari, 1570),
Vittorio Alfieri (tomb by Canova, 1810) - and
Galileo Galilei (tomb by Foggini, 1737)
(right)........
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