The first chapter of Tuscan history belongs to Etruscan tribes known as the Tusci, from whom the region took its name. The origins of the Etruscans are shrouded in mystery, but most modern scholars believe they migrated from Eastern Europe over the Alps, and represented the flowering of the early Italic tribes. These tribes moved into Umbria, pushing out their chief enemy, the Umbri, the agricultural tribe who in turn gave their name to that region. Around 3,000 years ago an advanced Etruscan culture was thriving in the hilly terrain that surrounds present-day Volterra in western Tuscany. Much of what they left behind is now on display in Volterra’s Museo Etrusco Guarnacci. These early tribes left their mark in other ways too. It was the Etruscans who introduced the system of artificial irrigation and the Umbrians who reared the white cattle for which the region is still renowned.
Pieces of history
Archaeologists have pieced together what they know of the Etruscan civilisation by analysing their ruins and artefacts. Some key Tuscan sites with evidence of the Etruscans include Fiesole, the Maremma, Volterra and Cortona.
Etruscan vase
Dreamstime
The Roman Period
Rome annexed Etruria in 351BC, and, over the next two centuries, built four great Roman roads across the territory, part of the massive road-building programme that was to transform Italy. The new roads avoided the great Etruscan cities, which slowly fell into decline, allowing the new Roman cities such as Pistoriae (Pistoia) to grow in importance. New colonies were founded at Ansedonia, Fiesole, Roselle, Populonia, Volterra, Luni and Lucca. The cultural identity of the Etruscans was gradually absorbed into that of the Romans, a process that accelerated in 91BC when Roman citizenship was extended to the Etruscans.
Roman theatre, Volterra
Steve MacDonald/Apa Publications
By 59BC, when Julius Caesar established the colony of Florentia as a kind of retirement community for veterans (a clever way to maintain order in outlying provinces), the Etruscans were long gone from both Tuscany and Umbria, overrun by the joint menace of the Romans from the south and the Gauls from the north. But the Romans learned many things from the Etruscans – principally the Tuscan arch, which they developed as a key element in their extraordinary aqueducts, bridges and buildings.
By creating the roads and major cities of Tuscany, the Romans left a permanent imprint on the landscape. A millennium later, the ruins of their great bridges, amphitheatres and city walls would be the inspiration for the next great blossoming of Italian culture: Tuscany’s coming of age, the Renaissance.
After invasions by Goths and, later, Byzantine armies put an end to control from Rome, much of Tuscany re-emerged under the stable influence of the Lombards.
St Francis Frees the Town of Arezzo of Demons, c.1300
Corbis
Christianity and Medieval Clashes
Long before the Roman Empire went into decline in the late 5th century AD, Christianity had gained a foothold in the region. The first monastery was established near Spoleto in the 1st century AD; around AD250 St Minias became the first Christian martyr in Florence, and the city, which became capital of the province of Tuscia in the 3rd century, was the seat of a bishopric early in the following century. St Benedict, born in Umbria in 480, founded one of the first religious orders, and another son of Umbria, Francis of Assisi, born in 1182, would become one of Italy’s most beloved saints. During the medieval period the pilgrims travelling along the Via Francigena between Rome and France meant that Christianity brought wealth and development to the whole area.
Though prosperous, the region was far from peaceful. Unrest rippled across the land with the Guelf–Ghibelline struggles, in essence a scramble for power between the temporal leaders of the Holy Roman Empire (the Ghibellines) and the Pope and his supporters (the Guelfs). Florence’s sympathies were with the Guelfs; most of the city’s rivals, including Pisa and Siena, were Ghibelline. Florence attained the ascendancy as the fortunes of Pisa, once a great maritime power, waned when Genoa triumphed at sea, and as Cosimo de’ Medici, scion of Europe’s greatest banking family, led Florence to final victory over its one remaining rival, Siena, in 1557.
St Francis of Assisi
Nobody embodies Christian teaching quite so appealingly as St Francis, Umbria’s most famous son, born in Assisi in 1182. When he was 27, Francis received a call to give his life to God; he renounced his sizeable inheritance, dressed himself in sackcloth and began to preach. He urged his growing body of followers to renounce material possessions and pledge obedience to God and, in a refreshing departure from the fire and brimstone that had characterised much Church teaching until then, to appreciate the beauty of the natural world, which was God’s creation. Francis founded an order and took his message across Europe and to the Holy Land with the Crusaders. He died on the floor of his hut in Assisi in 1226 and was canonised two years later. Assisi has been an important point of pilgrimage ever since.
In the Papal States’ quest for power, popes sent armies to Umbria to conquer its proud hill towns. Perugia, the wealthiest, most powerful and most independent of them all, mounted the greatest resistance. In the 16th century, the Baglioni clan, the city’s ruling family, went so far as to try to assassinate a papal legate. The papacy retaliated, first by increasing the salt tax (avoidance of this usurious yet frequently used form of taxation is the reason Umbrian bread is still made without salt) and eventually by taking over the city and, for good measure, levelling the Baglioni palaces and the surrounding neighbourhood. (As you ascend from the city’s underground parking lots, a series of passageways takes you past these evocative ruins.)
The Medici
Decidedly the most important family of the Renaissance, the Medici made their fortune as bankers and craftily positioned themselves among the city’s decision-makers, often without even holding an official government office. Cosimo, Il Vecchio (‘the Elder’) earned himself the title pater patriae (‘father of his country’) and hereby started the family’s dynasty. Perhaps the most famous Medici was Lorenzo, Il Magnifico (‘the Magnificent’), who was a huge patron of Renaissance artists and a master of diplomacy. In the years following his death, however, the Medici’s fate took an unfortunate turn, as the family was eventually run out of town for a questionable political manoeuvre in a war with France. In 1512 the Medici regained control of the city and ruled Florence as the grand dukes of Tuscany until 1743.
The Renaissance
Amid all this strife, Florentines were engaging in a frenzy of activity that would pull Western civilisation out of the Dark Ages. The Renaissance took root in Florence in the early 15th century, under the patronage of the powerful Medici clan, who, with some bloody interruptions, would continue to rule Florence, and most of Tuscany, until the middle of the 18th century.
In March 1436, Florence celebrated the completion of the dome that crowns its cathedral. The construction of this massive drum was one of the great architectural achievements of the Renaissance. The dome still rises high above Florence as if to announce that, yes, this is where the Renaissance first blossomed.
Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Gozzoli’s The Journey of the Magi
Hans Höfer/Apa Publications
At every turn in the city you can trace the development of this movement that enabled people to look at the world in an enlightened way. In the Uffizi, the art gallery Florence founded in the 16th century, you will see how Uccello became one of the first painters to master that great Renaissance contribution, perspective; and in the church of San Lorenzo you may notice how the architect Brunelleschi introduced a new order to spatial relationships.
In the Accademia, you need only look at that most famous of all Renaissance sculptures, Michelangelo’s David, to see how the Renaissance revolutionised the way sculptors looked at the human form. And in the Bargello you can appreciate how Donatello’s wonderful marble St George introduced a new realism, depicting the saint as a human being, alive and ready for action.
Umbria did not embrace the Renaissance with the same fervour as its neighbour, Tuscany, but there was an artistic flowering here as well, as a glimpse of Giotto’s frescoes depicting the life of St Francis (28 panels in the church dedicated to the saint in Assisi) will testify.
From Unification to World War II
Despite these amazing accomplishments, the citizens of Florence and the rest of Tuscany slumbered through the post-Renaissance years as a backwater, a pawn to greater European powers. In 1860, after more than a century of capable rule by the House of Lorraine, Tuscany joined forces with Piedmont as part of a united Italy. Florence, in fact, served briefly as the Italian capital from 1865 to 1871.
In Umbria, papal control continued almost uninterrupted until the unification of Italy in 1860, and the benign neglect with which the region was administered may well explain the unchanged state of Umbrian hill towns well into the 19th century. When the new Italian state took control, towns like Perugia welcomed their freedom from papal oppression.
Florence’s Ponte alle Grazie was rebuilt in 1953 after being destroyed by the Germans
Corbis
Both regions have seen great sorrow in their more recent history. The absence of old bridges across the Arno attests to the role Tuscany played in World War II. Some of the major battles in the European theatre took place in and around Florence in the summer of 1944, when the German troops entrenched themselves along the Arno and in the surrounding mountains as the Allies made their advance. The Germans retreated in August, but not before blowing up the city’s beloved bridges, leaving only the Ponte Vecchio intact.
After the 1966 floods
Corbis
Recent Developments
The world’s attention turned to the Arno again in November 1966, when the river burst its banks and flood-waters ravaged many of the city’s art treasures. Restoration efforts continued for decades, fuelled by the Florentines’ belief that they are protectors of the Renaissance heritage. These same custodial efforts came into play again in May 1993, when a car bomb ripped through parts of the Uffizi galleries; within months, the damage had been repaired and the museum had reopened.
Expansion of the Uffizi continues, and the 18 rooms opened at the end of 2011 are testament to the progress being made. For a long time Florence has run the risk of becoming a sealed monument, but following the election of charismatic mayor, Matteo Renzi, Florence is showing signs of moving forward.
Umbria, after finally reaching an unprecedented level of prosperity in the last few decades of the 20th century, was struck by disaster in 1997, when earthquakes shook the peaceful region, killing four and causing extensive damage. Nevertheless, restoration was remarkably rapid, with many churches and buildings reopening just five years later. Northwest Tuscany also suffered disaster in October 2011, when severe flash-floods tragically caused people to lose their lives and their homes.
The two regions continue to rely on two main sources of income and livelihood: tourism and agriculture. Tuscany’s wines and olive oil are famous the world over, and Umbria, though often overshadowed by its neighbour, produces wheat and tobacco, as well as olives and grapes.
Despite the many advantages it brings to both regions, tourism has brought problems as well. By creating large parking lots underground and in the valleys below hilltop cities, Umbria has been especially successful at making its cities traffic-free without causing too much discomfort to local motorists. And in an effort to cut congestion and pollution, the first of three new tram lines was opened in Florence in February 2010. The €560- million project has been met with loud protests from those concerned with preserving Florence’s great architectural treasures, particularly because one line is planned to pass right in front of the Duomo. No doubt in the years to come both Tuscany and Umbria will continue to strive to find the best ways to face modern challenges whilst preserving the vast treasures of their past.
Keeping in touch with the past
Corbis