Florence is a city in Italy on the River Arno about 170 miles north of Rome in Tuscany, Northern Italy. it was an important city in the Middle Ages and it is considered the center of the Italian Renaissance, a “rebirth” of the arts and architecture after the constrictive days of the Middle Ages (or so Renaissance people thought). That rebirth was made possible because Florence was also a center of banking and trade, and its wealthy patrons made the burgeoning of the arts possible. It was the richest city of its time, and home to one of the wealthiest families in Europe, the de’ Medici family.

Florence was a city-state that began as a republic ruled by a council called the signoria, appointed by a ruler that was elected every two months. It was a republic beginning in 1115 and it soon came to dominate most of Tuscany (there was no nation of Italy until the nineteenth century), despite frequent coups and political unrest. The Medici family and the papacy together finally destroyed the republic completely in the 16th century and made it a kingdom controlled by the de’ Medici family for decades and decades. The Medici man who made all this possible was named Cosimo.

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