Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Florence: Its History, Its Art, Its Landmarks: The Cultured Traveler
    Florence: Its History, Its Art, Its Landmarks: The Cultured Traveler
    Florence: Its History, Its Art, Its Landmarks: The Cultured Traveler
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    Florence: Its History, Its Art, Its Landmarks: The Cultured Traveler

    By Mike Carpenter

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Get ready to immerse yourself in centuries of history!

    Discover Florence's past and its tremendous legacy of beauty, churches, museums, and incomparable masterpieces by the greatest artists of all time. Get to know the cradle of the Renaissance with this comprehensive guide for cultured travelers.

    Learn the story behind such world-famous landmarks as

    • The Florence Cathedral
    • Brunelleschi's Dome
    • Giotto's Campanile
    • The Baptistery of St. John
    • Ponte Vecchio
    • And many more.


    Please note that this is a historical guide. It does not include lists of hotels and restaurants, nor does it contain pictures or maps.

    AI-FREE CONTENT

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMike Carpenter
    Release dateFeb 24, 2024
    ISBN9798224714865
    Florence: Its History, Its Art, Its Landmarks: The Cultured Traveler

    Read more from Mike Carpenter

    Related to Florence

    Related ebooks

    European History For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Isabelle De Lusignan

      Nov 11, 2023

      After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, when Constantinople fell into the hands of the Latin crusaders, the geography of the Byzantine Empire and that of Morea, modern Peloponnese, changed significantly. The socio-political patterns that developed during t

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Way With Words

      Nov 11, 2023

      A Way With Words
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sympathy For The Devil

      Oct 23, 2024

      Sympathy For The Devil
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The World Of Louis Ix

      May 5, 2023

      Louis IX, who came to the throne twelve years later, was heir to these developments, and he reigned for the better part of half a century, during the most vibrant decades of the thirteenth century. His reign, initially aided by the regency of his for

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The A-z Of Florence

      Nov 4, 2021

      The river that flows through central Florence begins at Monte Falterona in the Apennines and flows 241km from there to the Ligurian Sea. The prolific Florentine artist was born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi in 1445. His masterpieces Primavera and Th

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Battle That Never Was

      Aug 5, 2024

      The Battle That Never Was
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Can You Learn While Being a Numismatist?

      Jun 26, 2020

      In my decades of working as a coin dealer, I have written a lot of sales copy. In the process of describing various items, I have had to dig into the history of the pieces or the history behind what was selected for the artwork. In the process, I lea

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What Can You Learn While Being a Numismatist?

      Aug 17, 2020

      In my decades of working as a coin dealer, I have written a lot of sales copy. In the process of describing various items, I have had to dig into the history of the pieces or the history behind what was selected for the artwork. In the process, I lea

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The View From The Rocca

      Sep 1, 2022

      The View From The Rocca
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Family Drama

      Feb 18, 2021

      Family Drama
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The gold Fioriuo

      Jan 14, 2022

      The gold Fioriuo
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Byzantine Emperor In Europe

      Nov 11, 2023

      Perhaps Manuel gazed upon the fading silhouette of Constantinople from the ship's deck, wondering when—if ever—he would return to his capital. Constantinople was besieged by the Ottomans and likely to fall without military assistance. Indeed, this wa

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Tudor London: A Global City

      Apr 13, 2023

      Tudor London: A Global City
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Norman Coins In Southern Italy And Sicily

      Jan 14, 2022

      YOUR INSIDER GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF PROFESSIONAL NUMISMATICS The first Normans arrived in southern Italy around 1030 as mercenaries brought in to fight in the wars between Italian, Byzantine and Arab rulers. Sicily and southern Italy were frontier reg

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The History Of The Nation State

      Feb 27, 2020

      The History Of The Nation State
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Ottomans in Tunisia

      Jan 23, 2023

      The Ottomans in Tunisia
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Monumental Cradles Of Democracy

      Oct 31, 2024

      Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity John Ma (Princeton University Press, £42) OF ALL THE SPECTACULAR REMAINS OF the ancient world, few have so fired the modern imagination as Palmyra. P

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      From Cantons To Shooting Thalers

      May 8, 2019

      The end of the 18th century revealed the decrepit dysfunction of the old governing system, which was a bunch of violent criminals doing whatever they pleased with other people’s time and money. All of human history has been megalomaniacal tyrants, pu

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Silkworms of San Leucio

      Jul 4, 2024

      The Silkworms of San Leucio
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Renaissance

      Feb 11, 2022

      THE Renaissance was a period in European history that falls between the Middle Ages and the Modern Era. Historians define it as starting in the 1300s and ending in the 1600s. The French word renaissance means “rebirth”. During this time there was a r

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Florence

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Florence - Mike Carpenter

      FLORENCE

      Its History, Its Art, Its Landmarks

      Copyright © 2024 by Mike Carpenter

      Cover art © 2024 by Believer

      Lily of Florence © 2024 by Nymur Khan

      Cover design by Elisa Pinizzotto

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the author's prior permission. For all inquiries, including requests for commercial use and translation rights, please contact:

      [email protected]

      A black and white shield with a fleur de lis design Description automatically generated

      HISTORY

      Florence is perhaps the most Italian city of all. While Milan firmly belongs to continental Europe, Naples is clearly a Mediterranean city, and Rome can be at once a universal hub of imperial history and a provincial town, Florence is the quintessential Italian city. One could argue that everything that gave Italy its unique character was born in Florence or Tuscany. The Italians’ language and literature originated here, where this people’s artistic genius and spirit of invention also shined to the full. Political ingenuity was not lacking among Florence’s citizens, either; one need only think of Niccolò Machiavelli and his The Prince – first published in 1532. In a twist of fate, Florence ceased to be the center of Italy’s political, artistic, and moral life just when Italy became a nation-state in the middle of the nineteenth century.

      From the late Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Florence grew into a great center of civilization, developing what one could call a peculiar spirit, i.e., an ideal of man and life as a whole that would leave lasting effects on the Italian people and their history. Florentines might even borrow the words spent by the great ancient orator and lawmaker Pericles – who lived in the fifth century BCE – about his fellow Athenians: We love beauty with simplicity and knowledge without laxity. Over the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, Florence could claim to live by that standard, but with a more popular quality completely absent from Athens’ ruling aristocracy. In their best moments, the citizens of Florence, though admittedly quarrelsome, were also ingenious, creative, and peaceful, by and large.

      Florence never derived its power and wealth from military strength and wars of conquest. Industry and money were the driving forces behind its ascent; merchants and bankers formed its aristocracy. Machiavelli wrote that the city was born in the second century BCE when a group of merchants coming from Fiesole – a small town nestled in the hills northeast of Florence long considered the most affluent center in the whole of Tuscany – settled at the conjunction of the rivers Arno and Mugnone. Archaeological excavation proves the presence of a thriving township in the first century BCE at the time of Roman dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla, making ancient Florence an established Roman-Etruscan settlement.

      Finding itself ideally positioned along the Via Cassia, one of Rome’s famed consular roads, Florence slowly became an important trading hub between Rome, Lucca, Pisa, and Faenza. The Romans called it Florentia, and Julius Caesar turned it into a Roman colony. By 287 CE, it was elevated to the capital city of Tuscia et Umbria (Etruscan Tuscany and Umbria) and became an episcopal seat in the first half of the fourth century. In 406 CE, the city could repel a siege laid by the Ostrogoths invading Italy from the north under their king, Radagaisus, thanks to the providential intervention of the Roman army led by Stilicho, the most powerful man in the entire Western Roman Empire at the time. A second attempt by the Ostrogoths to take the city happened in 542-543 CE but was equally unsuccessful. On the other hand, King Totila was able to claim an even bigger prize in December 546, when he conquered Rome after a two-year siege.

      In later years, Florence became an almost compulsory stop for emperors coming from northern Europe to Rome to be crowned by the pope. It is thought that Charlemagne celebrated Christmas in Florence in 786 during one of his travels to Italy. He was later crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III in the ancient St. Peter’s Basilica (not the current one) on Christmas Eve of the year 800. During the so-called Carolingian Renaissance of the ninth century, the city gained in importance, becoming the headquarters of the school for the cultural training of the clergy in the Tuscan region in 825 and later the seat of a count directly representing the imperial authority against the powerful marquises of Tuscany.

      Florence’s ascension to a more prominent role in history began after 1115 when the vastly powerful Marchioness Matilda of Tuscany – also known as Matilda of Canossa – passed away. In the Investiture Controversy, which for fifty years had pitted the emperor against the papacy in a struggle for authority over the empire’s bishops, Matilda had been a staunch ally of the pope, and most cities in central Italy – including Florence – had followed her lead. It was Matilda who first granted Florence municipal autonomy, an essential step in the city’s rise. A series of victorious struggles of the Florentines against the feudal lords of the countryside allowed the communal magistrates to fortify their rule, and the first consuls were elected starting in 1138. At the time, the power in Florence was in the hands of syndicates of noblemen – the Tower Societies – supported by the clergy and the wealthiest merchant families – the Calimala.

      The city’s symbol has been universally known as the Lily of Florence for almost one thousand years. In botanical terms, it would be more accurate to call it an iris, the flowering genus to which it belongs. Iris flowers are ubiquitous in the Arno Valley and the hills around Florence, which explains the Florentines’

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1