59 B.C.-A.D. 1200: Roman, Early Christian, Medieval
1300s: Prosperity, Plague, Recovery
1400s: Renaissance and the Medici Dynasty
1500-1800: Decline, Medici Dukes, Renaissance Goes South
1900s to Today: Uncontrolled Urbanization, Urban Renewal
Renaissance Florence: Cradle of the Modern World
500 B.C.-A.D. 1000: Etruscans, Romans, and “Barbarians”
1000-1400: Medieval Rise and Political Squabbles
1400s, The Quattrocento: A Prosperous Renaissance City Under Medici Princes
1500-1800: The “Later” Medici Oversee Florence’s Decline
1800-Present: Florence Enters the Modern World
It’s the usual Rome story—military outpost, thriving provincial capital, conversion to Christianity, overrun by barbarians—except Florence really didn’t fall. Proud medieval Florentines traced their roots back to civilized Rome, and the city remained a Tuscan commercial center during the Dark Ages.
• Piazza della Repubblica (the old Forum)
• Find the ancient Roman military camp on today’s street map. You can still see the rectangular grid plan—aligned by compass points, rather than the river.
• Baptistery (built c. 1050), likely on site of Roman temple
• Roman and Etruscan fragments (Duomo Museum)
Woolen cloth manufacture, trade, and banking made urban merchants—organized into guilds—more powerful than rural, feudal nobles. Florence, now a largely independent city-state, allied with nearby cities.
• Bargello (it was built as the City Hall)
• Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella churches
• Baptistery interior mosaics
As part of a budding democracy with civic pride, Florence’s guilds and merchants financed major construction projects (some begun in the late 1200s). But the population of 90,000 suddenly was cut nearly in half by the Black Death (bubonic plague) of 1348. Recovery was slowed by more plagues, bank failures, and political rivalries.
• Duomo and Campanile (original decorations in Duomo Museum)
• Palazzo Vecchio
• Orsanmichele Church
• Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, and Giotto’s bell-tower design (Campanile) and his paintings in Uffizi
While 1500 marks Europe’s Renaissance, in Florence—where the whole revival of classical culture got its start—the Renaissance began and ended in the 1400s (the Quattrocento). The Medici, a rich textile-and-banking family whose wealth gave them political leverage around Europe, ruled the most prosperous city in Italy, appeasing the masses with philanthropy and public art.
History comes to life when you visit a centuries-old church. Even if you wouldn’t know your apse from a hole in the ground, learning a few simple terms will enrich your experience. Note that not every church has every feature, and that a “cathedral” isn’t a type of church architecture, but rather a designation for a church that’s a governing center for a local bishop.
Aisles: The long, generally low-ceilinged arcades that flank the nave.
Altar: The raised area with a ceremonial table (often adorned with candles or a crucifix), where the priest prepares and serves the bread and wine for Communion.
Apse: The space beyond the altar, generally bordered with small chapels.
Barrel Vault: A continuous round-arched ceiling that resembles an extended upside-down U.
Choir: A cozy area, often screened off, located within the church nave and near the high altar, where services are sung in a more intimate setting.
Cloister: Covered hallways bordering an open-air courtyard (usually square-shaped), traditionally where monks and nuns got fresh air.
Facade: The exterior surface of the church’s main (west) entrance, generally highly decorated.
Groin Vault: An arched ceiling formed where two equal barrel vaults meet at right angles. Less common usage: term for a medieval jock strap.
Narthex: The area (portico or foyer) between the main entry and the nave.
Nave: The long, central section of the church (running west to east, from the entrance to the altar) where, in medieval times, the congregation sits or stands through the service.
Transept: In a traditional cross-shaped floor plan, the transept is one of the two parts forming the “arms” of the cross. The transepts run north-south, perpendicularly crossing the east-west nave.
West Portal: The main entry to the church (on the west end, opposite the main altar).
• Brunelleschi’s Duomo dome and Pazzi Chapel
• Donatello’s statues in Bargello, Duomo Museum, and on Orsanmichele exterior
• Ghiberti’s two bronze doors on Baptistery (originals in Duomo Museum)
• Botticelli’s paintings in Uffizi
• The Uffizi, tracing painting’s history from medieval to Michelangelo
• The Bargello, tracing sculpture’s history
• Masaccio’s frescoes in Santa Maria Novella and Brancacci Chapel
• Fra Angelico paintings (and Savonarola history) in San Marco Museum
Bankrupt, the antidemocratic Medici were exiled to Rome, where they married into royalty and returned—backed by foreign powers—as even less democratic nobles. The “Renaissance spirit” moved elsewhere, taking Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael with it. In succeeding centuries, the Medici dukes ruled an economically and politically declining city, but still financed art.
• Michelangelo’s Florentine works—David, Medici Chapels, and Laurentian Medici Library
• Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens (the later Medici palace)
• Later paintings (Uffizi) and statues (Bargello)
• Destruction of the original Duomo facade (Duomo Museum)
• Medici Chapels—pompous tombs of (mostly) later Medici
• Ponte Vecchio cleaned up for jewelry shops
• Baroque interiors of many older churches
• Galileo’s fingers, telescopes, and experiments in the Galileo Science Museum
After years of rule by Austrian nobles, Florence peacefully booted out the Ausländers and joined the Italian unification movement. It even served briefly as modern Italy’s capital (1865-1870). Artistic revival of both medieval (Neo-Gothic) and Renaissance (Neoclassical) styles.
• Duomo’s current Neo-Gothic facade
• Piazza della Repubblica (commemorating unification), with its fine 19th-century cafés
Population growth, rapid industrialization, WWII destruction, and the 20-foot-high flood of 1966 made Florence a chaotic, noisy, dirty, traffic-choked city. In the last 30 years, however, the tourist zone has been cleaned and cleared, museums revamped, hours extended, and the people have become accustomed to welcoming foreign visitors. Now if they could just do something about those Vespas....
There was something dynamic about the Florentines. Pope Boniface VIII said there were five elements: earth, air, fire, water...and Florentines. For 200 years, starting in the early 1300s, their city was a cultural hub.
Florence’s contributions to Western culture are immense: the revival of the arts, humanism, and science after centuries of medieval superstition and oppression; the seeds of democracy; the modern Italian language (which grew out of the popular Florentine dialect); the art of Botticelli, Leonardo, and Michelangelo; the writings of Machiavelli, Boccaccio, and Dante; and the explorations of Amerigo Vespucci, who gave his name to a newly discovered continent. Florentines considered themselves descendants of the highly cultured people of the Roman Empire. But Florence, even in its Golden Age, was always a mixture of lustiness and refinement. The streets were filled with tough-talking, hardened, illiterate merchants who strode about singing verses from Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Florentine culture came from money, and that money came from the wool trade, silk factories, and banking. The city had a large middle class and strong guilds (trade associations for skilled craftsmen). Success was a matter of civic pride, and Florentines showed that pride in the mountains of money they spent to rebuild and beautify the city.
Technically, Florence was a republic, ruled by elected citizens rather than nobility. While there was some opportunity for upward mobility among the middle class, most power was in the hands of a few wealthy banking families. The most powerful was the Medici family. The Medici bank had branches in 10 European cities, including London, Geneva, Bruges (Belgium), and Lyon (France). The pope kept his checking account in the Rome branch. The Florentine florin was the monetary standard of the continent.
Florence dominated Italy economically and culturally, but not militarily. The independent Italian city-states squabbled and remained scattered until the nationalist movement four centuries later. (When someone suggested to the Renaissance Florentine Niccolò Machiavelli that the Italian city-states might unite against their common enemy, France, he wrote back, “Don’t make me laugh.”)
Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492), inheritor of the family’s wealth and power, and his grandfather Cosimo’s love of art, was a central figure of the Golden Age. He was young (20 when he took power), athletic, and intelligent, in addition to being a poet, horseman, musician, and leader. He wrote love songs and humorous ditties to be performed loudly and badly at carnival time. His marathon drinking bouts and illicit love affairs were legendary. He learned Greek and Latin and read the classics, yet his great passion was hunting. He was the Renaissance Man—a man of knowledge and action, a patron of the arts, and a scholar and man of the world. He was Lorenzo the Magnificent.
Lorenzo epitomized the Florentine spirit of optimism. Born on New Year’s Day and raised in the lap of luxury (Donatello’s David stood in the family courtyard) by loving parents, he grew up feeling that there was nothing he couldn’t do. Florentines saw themselves as part of a “new age,” a great undertaking of discovery and progress in man’s history. They boasted that within the city walls, there were more “nobly gifted souls than the world has seen in the entire thousand years before.” These people invented the term “Dark Ages” for the era that preceded theirs.
Lorenzo surrounded himself with Florence’s best and brightest. They created an informal “Platonic Academy,” based on that of ancient Greece, to meet over a glass of wine under the stars at the Medici villa and discuss literature, art, music, and politics—witty conversation was considered an art in itself.
Their neo-Platonic philosophy stressed the goodness of man and the created world; they believed in a common truth behind all religion. The Academy was more than just an excuse to go out with the guys: The members were convinced that their discussions were changing the world and improving their souls.
Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510) was a member of the Platonic Academy. He painted scenes from the classical myths that the group read, weaving contemporary figures and events into the ancient subjects. He gloried in the nude body, which he considered God’s greatest creation.
Artists such as Botticelli thrived on the patronage of wealthy individuals, government, the Church, and guilds. Botticelli commanded as much as 100 florins for one work, enough to live on for a year in high style, which he did for many years. In Botticelli’s art we see the lightness, gaiety, and optimism of Lorenzo’s court.
Another of Lorenzo’s protégés was the young Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564). Impressed with his work, Lorenzo took the poor, unlearned 13-year-old boy into the Medici household and treated him like a son.
Michelangelo’s playmates were the Medici children, later to become Popes Leo X and Clement VII, who would give him important commissions. For all the encouragement, education, and contacts Michelangelo received, his most important gift from Lorenzo was simply a place at the dinner table, where he could absorb the words of the great men of the time and their love of art for art’s sake.
Even with all the art and philosophy of the Renaissance, violence, disease, and warfare were still present in medieval proportions. For the lower classes, life was as harsh as it had always been. Many artists and scholars wore swords and daggers as part of everyday dress. This was the time of the ruthless tactics of the Borgias (known for murdering their political enemies) and of other families battling for power. Lorenzo himself barely escaped assassination in the cathedral during Easter Mass; his brother died in the attack.
The center of the Renaissance gradually shifted to Rome, but its artists were mostly Florentine. In the 15th century, the Holy City of Rome was a dirty, decaying, crime-infested place. Then a series of popes, including Lorenzo’s son and nephew, launched a building and beautification campaign. They used fat commissions (and outright orders) to lure Michelangelo, Raphael, and others to Rome. The Florentine Renaissance headed south.
| c. 550 B.C. | Etruscans settle in Fiesole, near Florence. |
| 59 B.C. | Julius Caesar establishes the Roman town of Florentia (meaning “flowering” or “flourishing”) at a convenient crossing point on the Arno River. |
| c. A.D. 200 | Thriving Roman city, pop. 10,000. |
| c. 350 | In the wake of Constantine’s legalization of Christianity, Bishop (and Saint) Zenobius builds a church where the Duomo stands today. |
| 450 | Rome falls. Ostrogoths from the east, Byzantines from modern-day Turkey, and Germanic barbarians sweep through in waves. But Florence survives as a small trading town. |
| 800 | Charlemagne’s Franks sweep through; he becomes the first Holy Roman Emperor. Florence is part of the Empire for the next 300 years, and is the regional capital (rather than Fiesole). |
| 1401 | Baptistery door competition energizes an already civic-minded city. |
| 1406 | Florence, by conquering Pisa, gains a port and becomes a sea-trading power. |
| 1421 | Giovanni de’ Medici, a shrewd businessman, expands the Medici family business from textiles into banking. |
| 1434 | Cosimo the Elder (Giovanni’s son) returns triumphant from exile to rule Florence. Outwardly, he honors the Florentine constitution, but, in fact, he uses his great wealth to rule as a tyrant, buying popularity with lavish patronage of public art. |
| 1436 | Dedication of the Duomo, topped by Brunelleschi’s dome. |
| 1440 | Battle of Anghiari—Florence defeats Milan. |
| c. 1440 | Donatello’s David. |
| 1458 | Cosimo the Elder creates a rubber-stamp Council of the Hundred. |
| 1464 | Cosimo the Elder’s son, Piero the Gouty, rules stiffly but ably. |
| 1469 | Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cosimo the Elder’s grandson, rules over the most powerful city in Italy. He is a popular politician but a so-so businessman. |
| 1492 | Lorenzo dies. Many Medici banks go bankrupt. Lorenzo’s son, Piero the Unfortunate, faces an invasion force from France and appears to side with the foreigners. |
| 1494 | Reviled for being morally, financially, and politically bankrupt, the Medici family is exiled. In the political vacuum, the monk Girolamo Savonarola appears as a voice of moral authority. He reestablishes the Florentine constitution. |
| 1498 | Savonarola is hanged and burned on Piazza della Signoria by political enemies and a citizenry tired of his morally strict rule. The constitution-driven republic continues. |
