Republic of Florence

A republic of merchants that produced the Renaissance and could not keep itself republican. Florence grew rich on wool finishing and then on banking; the florin, struck from 1252 and never debased, became the standard gold coin of Europe, and the Bardi, Peruzzi and later Medici houses financed kings - the Bardi and Peruzzi collapsed in the 1340s when Edward III of England repudiated his debts. Its guild-based constitution excluded nobles from office and rotated the priorate every two months, which prevented tyranny and produced permanent factional warfare between Guelphs and Ghibellines and then within them; Dante was exiled in one of those quarrels and wrote the Comedy in the vernacular that became Italian. The Ciompi rising of 1378 briefly put unrepresented wool workers into government. Cosimo de' Medici took control from 1434 without holding office, and his family's patronage funded Brunelleschi's dome, Donatello, Botticelli and Michelangelo. Savonarola's theocratic republic from 1494 to 1498 ended with his burning in the same square as his bonfire. Machiavelli served the restored republic and wrote after it fell. A siege in 1530 installed the Medici as hereditary dukes, ending the republic for good. Tuscany became a grand duchy. The city's dialect is why Italians speak Florentine. The Duomo's dome, raised without centering, was the largest masonry dome ever built. The Palazzo Vecchio still houses the city government. The Uffizi were built as Medici administrative offices, which is what the name means. Florence was briefly the capital of united Italy from 1865 to 1871. Its historic centre is a World Heritage site.

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