#2 Italy, Tuscany, Florence (victor lupu)

Art and Nature, Florence

30 days photo - challenge

• [x] day 2°

Picture: #victorlupu

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.

Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages". Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.

References:

• Bilancio demografico anno 2013, dati ISTAT
• "Economy of Renaissance Florence, Richard A. Goldthwaite, Book – Barnes & Noble". Search.barnesandnoble.com. 23 - ---- April 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2010.
• Spencer Baynes, L.L.D., and W. Robertson Smith, L.L.D., Encyclopædia Britannica. Akron, Ohio: The Werner Company, 1907: p. 675
• Brucker, Gene A. (1969). Renaissance Florence. New York: Wiley. p. 23. ISBN 978-0520046955.
• "storia della lingua in 'Enciclopedia dell'Italiano'". Treccani.it. Retrieved 28 October 2017.