Florence
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area.
Florence is famous for its history. A centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time, Florence is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages". A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city was also the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy.
The historic centre of Florence attracts millions of tourists each year, and Euromonitor International ranked the city as the world's 72nd most visited in 2009, with 1,685,000 visitors. It was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and the city is noted for its history, culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Pitti Palace, amongst others, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics.
Florence is also an important city in Italian fashion, being ranked within the top fifty fashion capitals of the world; furthermore, it is also a major national economic centre, being a tourist and industrial hub. In 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy.
Notable residents
- Sir Harold Acton, author and aesthete.
- John Argyropoulos, scholar
- Leone Battista Alberti, polymath.
- Dante Alighieri, poet.
- Giovanni Boccaccio, poet.
- Baldassarre Bonaiuti, 14th century chronicler
- Sandro Botticelli, painter.
- Aureliano Brandolini, agronomist and development cooperation scholar.
- Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 19th-century English poets.
- Filippo Brunelleschi, architect.
- Michelangelo Buonarroti, sculptor, painter, author of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and David.
- Francesco Casagrande, Cyclist.
- Roberto Cavalli, fashion designer.
- Enrico Coveri, fashion designer.
- Donatello, sculptor.
- Oriana Fallaci, journalist and author.
- Salvatore Ferragamo, fashion designer and shoemaker.
- Mike Francis (musician) born Francesco Puccioni, singer and composer.
- Frescobaldi Family, notable bankers and wine producers.
- Galileo Galilei, Italian physicist, astronomer, and philosopher.
- Giotto, early 14th century painter, sculptor and architect.
- Lorenzo Ghiberti, sculptor.
- Guccio Gucci, founder of the Gucci label.
- Pietro Pacciani, farmer, starring of the case of the Monster of Florence.
- Robert Lowell, poet.
- Niccolò Machiavelli, poet, philosopher and political thinker, author of The Prince and The Discourses.
- Masaccio, painter.
- Medici family.
- Antonio Meucci, inventor of the telephone.
- Florence Nightingale, pioneer of modern nursing, and a statistician.
- Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione. Early photographic artist, Secret agent and Courtesan.
- Valerio Profondavalle, Flemish painter
- Raphael, painter.
- Girolamo Savonarola
- Adriana Seroni, politic.
- Giovanni Spadolini, politic.
- Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect, and historian.
- Amerigo Vespucci, explorer and cartographer, namesake of the Americas.
- Leonardo da Vinci, polymath
- Girolamo Mei, historian and humanist
- Rose McGowan, Florence-born actress
See also