Historic Centre of Florence
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How it came to be
Florence was laid out like an army camp in 59 BC as Florentia, a Roman colony for veterans, on the site of an Etruscan settlement. The Republic of Florence lasted from 1115 to 1532. Its population may have reached 120,000 around 1325, but the Black Death of 1348 cut it by more than half.
Under the Medici in the 15th and 16th centuries Florence became the centre of the Renaissance. The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was structurally complete by 1436 with Brunelleschi's dome, and Giotto, Donatello, Masaccio, Botticelli, Leonardo and Michelangelo all worked in the city. Cosimo I became Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569, and Medici rule lasted until 1737.
Florence was capital of the Kingdom of Italy from 1865 to 1871. In August 1944 retreating German forces blew up every bridge over the Arno except the Ponte Vecchio. The flood of 4 November 1966 damaged some 14,000 works of art and three to four million books and manuscripts. The 505-hectare historic centre, bounded by the remains of the 14th-century walls, was inscribed in 1982.
Travellers who came here
- 1786-10
In his hurry to reach Rome he ran quickly over the city, the cathedral and the baptistery, and left the Boboli Gardens as fast as he had entered them.
- 1840-12
He arrived on 12–13 December by way of Innsbruck, the Brenner, Verona and Bologna. The Metal Pig, included in A Poet's Bazaar, opens with the city's bronze boar fountain in front of a market, its snout polished by the people who drink from it.
- 1867-07
He saw Galileo's tomb and Dante's tomb in Santa Croce. In the book he wrote that he got lost in the narrow streets at nine one night and wandered until nearly three in the morning.
- 1873-05
They arrived over the Brenner Pass in the night and were met by Count Fè d'Ostiani, the Italian minister to Japan. Kume described the size of the cathedral at length and was struck by the number of people copying works in the Uffizi.
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