The Roman colony of Florentia was
established in 59 BC; expansion
was rapid, based on trade along
the Arno. In the sixth century AD
the city fell to the barbarian
hordes of Totila, then the
Lombards
and then Charlemagne's
Franks
. In 1078 Countess Mathilda of
Tuscia supervised the construction
of new fortifications, and in the
year of her death - 1115 - granted
Florence the status of an
independent
city . Around 1200, the first
Arti
(Guilds) were formed to promote
the interests of traders and
bankers in the face of conflict
between the pro-imperial
Ghibelline
faction and the pro-papal
Guelphs
. In 1260, the Guelph-backed
regime of Florence's
Primo
Popolo , a government of the
mercantile class, was ousted after
Siena's Ghibelline army defeated
Florence. By the 1280s the Guelphs
were back in power through the
Secondo
Popolo ; the exclusion of the
nobility from government in 1293
was the most dramatic measure in a
programme of political reform that
invested power in the
Signoria
, a council drawn from the major
guilds. The mighty Palazzo della
Signoria - now known as the
Palazzo
Vecchio - was raised as a
visible demonstration of authority
over a huge city: at this time,
Florence had a population around
100,000, a thriving mercantile
sector and a highly developed
banking system (the
florin
was common currency across
Europe). Strife within the Guelph
camp marked the start of the
fourteenth century, and then in
the 1340s the two largest banks
collapsed and the
Black Death
struck, destroying up to half the
city's population.
The political rise of Cosimo
de' Medici , later dubbed
Cosimo il Vecchio ("the
Old"), was to some extent due
to his family's sympathies with
the smaller guilds. The Medici
fortune had been made by the
banking prowess of Cosimo's
father, Giovanni Bicci de' Medici,
and Cosimo used the power
conferred by wealth to great
effect. Through his patronage of
such figures as Brunelleschi and
Donatello, Florence became the
centre of artistic activity in
Italy.
The ascendancy continued under
Cosimo's grandson Lorenzo il
Magnifico , who ruled the city
at the height of its artistic
prowess. Papal resentment of
Florentine independence found an
echo in the jealousy of the Pazzi
family, one of the city's main
rivals to the Medici. The two
camps colluded in the Pazzi
conspiracy of 1478, in which
Lorenzo was wounded and his
brother Giuliano murdered. Before
Lorenzo's death in 1492, the
Medici bank failed, and in 1494
Lorenzo's son Piero was obliged to
flee. Florentine hearts and minds
were seized by the charismatic
Dominican monk Girolamo
Savonarola , who preached on
the decadence and corruption of
the city. Artists departed in
droves. In a symbolic
demonstration of the new order,
Savonarola and his child spies set
about collecting all the trappings
of Florence's Medicean culture -
books, paintings, tapestries,
fancy furniture and clothes - and
piled them high in Piazza della
Signoria in a Bonfire of the
Vanities . But such a graphic
assault on the past signalled a
turning-point: within a year,
Savonarola had been found guilty
of heresy and treason, and burned
alive at the same spot.
After Savonarola, the city
functioned peaceably under a
republican constitution headed by
Piero Soderini, whose chief
adviser was his friend Niccolò
Machiavelli . In 1512 the
Medici returned, and in 1516,
Giovanni de' Medici became Pope
Leo X , granting Michelangelo
and Leonardo da Vinci major
commissions. After the
assassination of the tyrannical
transvestite Alessandro de' Medici
in 1537, Florentine power was
handed to a new Cosimo, who seized
the Republic of Siena and, in
1569, took the title Cosimo I
, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The great
traditions of Florentine art
descended into farce as sycophants
such as Giorgio Vasari
plastered the city with fawning
images of Medici power and glory.
Florence's decline was slow and
painful. The later Medicis were
each more ridiculous than the
last: Francesco spent most
of his thirteen-year reign
indoors, obsessed by alchemy; Ferdinando
II sat back as harvests
failed, plagues ran riot and
banking and textiles slumped to
nothing; the virulently
anti-Semitic Cosimo III
spent 53 years in power cracking
down on dissidents; and Gian
Gastone spent virtually all
his time drunk in bed. When
Gastone died, in 1737, the Medici
line died with him.
Under the terms of a treaty
signed by Gian Gastone's sister, Anna
Maria Ludovica , Florence -
and the whole Grand Duchy of
Tuscany - passed to Francesco of
Lorraine, the future Francis I of
Austria. Austrian rule lasted
until the coming of the French in
1799; after a fifteen-year
interval of French control, the
Lorraine dynasty was brought back,
remaining in residence until the
Risorgimento upheavals of 1859.
Absorbed into the united Italian
state in the following year,
Florence became the capital
of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, a
position it held until 1875.
After 1890, large swathes of
the medieval city were demolished
by government officials and
developers; buildings that had
stood in the area of what is now
Piazza della Repubblica since the
early Middle Ages were pulled down
to make way for undistinguished
office blocks, and old quarters
around Santa Croce and Santa Maria
Novella were razed. In 1944, the
retreating German army blew up all
the city's bridges except the
Ponte Vecchio and destroyed
swathes of medieval architecture.
A disastrous flood in
November 1966 drowned several
people and wrecked buildings and
works of art. Restoration of
damage caused by the flood, and by
a 1993 Mafia car-bomb that
killed five people outside the
Uffizi, is still going on. Indeed,
monuments and paintings are the
basis of Florence's survival in
the new century, a state of
affairs that gives rise to
considerable popular discontent.
The development of new industrial
parks on the northern outskirts is
the latest and most ambitious
attempt to break Florence's
ever-increasing dependence on its
seven million annual tourists.
