"Of All the Fairest Cities of the Earth, None is So Fair as Florence."—Rogers

Florence was a flourishing city during the life of Christ. Tradition assigns the founding of the city to the Roman Dictator Sulla about 80 B. C. Under the Romans the city was known as Florentia. During the Gothic invasion, in the fifth century, Florentia was captured and destroyed by Totila, the Goth. Near the close of the eighth century, the city was rebuilt by Charlemagne. The new city grew rapidly in wealth and importance. In the tenth century it became a free city, and in the thirteenth century it was the richest city in Europe. The great charm about Florence is that it has never been taken by assault, nor destroyed, nor changed by a devastating fire. The palaces, the churches, and many of the homes, of which historians tell us, still stand erect.

One can walk across the same thresholds, look out from the same windows as did Dante, Giotto, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Fra Angelico, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, the princely Medici and the Martyr Savonarola. Florence is to-day the symbol of Roman Italy. Grimm says: "Florence is like a flower, which when fully blown, instead of withering on its stalk, turned, as it were, into stone."

The most brilliant period in Florentine history was that from 1215 to 1530. In the year 1215 the Guelphs and Ghibellines in Florence began to make war upon one another; in the year 1321 Dante died in exile. The century between these dates furnishes much of the contents of his "Inferno." The contests of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, continued later under the terms "Whites and Blacks," involved all the citizens of Florence; it began with a strife between two families, brought about by a woman.

The principal noble families of Florence were the Buondelmonte and the Donati, the Amadei and the Uberti. A widow of the house of Donati, desiring as her son-in-law the head of the noble family of Buondelmonte, persuaded him to marry her daughter, although he was at the time engaged to one of the Amadei. When the marriage became known, the Amadei and their relatives, the Uberti, fell upon young Buondelmonte, as he was crossing the Ponte Vecchio, and slew him at the foot of the statue of Mars. This murder threw the whole city into confusion, one-half siding with the Buondelmonte, the other half with the Uberti.

These nobles were divided also in politics. The Buondelmonte were of German origin, and the Ghibellines supported the Emperor; the Uberti were Guelphs and warmly favored the Pope.

The city of Florence belonged, by heritage, to the Countess Matilda, who, though of German origin, bequeathed all her possessions to the Church. The Pope, therefore, claimed Florence by right of bequest. The Emperor opposed his claim on the plea that the Countess held her land by fief and could not will it away. Registers of the families, as they stood on this side or that, are still preserved. Their palaces were little castles constructed for defence; and the almost incessant strife between hostile nobles, which lasted for centuries, was only ended by the annihilation of the contestants. This period now reads like an epic poem in stone, as one walks through beautiful Florence. For, in the midst of these turbulences, Florence grew and advanced in the arts and the sciences to such a degree, and produced such eminent men in all departments, that no other city in Italy rivaled it.

From 1434, the history of Florence is closely bound up with the princely Medici family (q.v.). Their unbounded wealth was the secret of their power, and history has taken care that the Medici shall be honored as the protectors of art and science; this one fact makes the world their debtor.

In 1860, Florence, with Tuscany, was incorporated with the Kingdom of Italy and was the capital until 1871, when the honor was conferred upon Rome.