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Florence City-State

Type Object Region Southern Europe Time c. 1115–1532

From the Middle Ages to the early Renaissance, Florence was one of central Italy's most dynamic commercial republics, famed for textiles, banking, an…

Timeline

  1. c. 1115–1300Florence · TuscanyThe Florentine commune gradually freed itself from imperial and papal control in the 12th-13th centuries; guilds managed wool, silk, and banking, and urban wealth and self-governing politics grew together, laying the economic foundation for the later Renaissance.
  2. 1341–1350Florence · TuscanyIn the early 1340s, an oligarchic government led by families such as Andrea Bardi and Tommaso Strozzi maintained republican forms. The 1348 Black Death devastated population and labor; some major banks (such as Bardi and Peruzzi) declined under combined debt and plague, and the social structure began to reorganize.
  3. c. 1400–1532Florence · TuscanyIn the 15th-16th centuries Florence became the center of humanism, art, and architectural innovation; the Medici dominated politics, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, and others worked here, and the city-state transformed from a commercial republic into a cultural capital.

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