The palazzo Riccardi, now public property, is much frequented for its fine library. The palazzo Strozzi is a fine type of Tuscan architecture. Florence abounds in other public edifices and monuments well meriting notice, but our limits oblige us to omit all mention of them. The practical and philanthropical institutions are also numerous and excellently organized. The hospital of Santa Maria Nuova contains a college of medi cine and surgery, which enjoys a European fame. The academy of the fine arts and the museum of natural history afford unlimited resources to the public interested in their collections. • There are 3 hospitals, 1 lunatic asylum, 9 theaters. The academy della Crusca is intrusted with the care of sifting and preserving uncorrupted the Italian language. The academy dei Georgofili was established in'the interests of agriculture, the progress and needs of which it reports quarterly in the Giornale Agrario Toseano. For a detailed description of F., see Guida della Cala di Firenze, 1822. The chief industrial occupations of the Florentines are the fabrication of silk and woolen textures, and of straw-plaiting for hats, etc., jewelry, and exquisite mosaics in rare stones. Education is more diffused in Tuscany than in any other Italian state; and the Floren tines are famous for their caustic wit and natural gifts of eloquence, as well as for their shrewd thriftiness and unflagging labor. In their moral superiority to other states may be recognized the effects of a better and more upright government than those which existed in most of the other divisions of the peninsula previous to the late partial union of Italy.
History of Florence.—The city of F. sprang originally from Fiesole (q.v.), at the font of which it lies extended. The inconvenient and hilly site of the Etruscan Fiesole, perched on the crest of an irregular height, rendered the town so difficult of access to the traders who resorted with their varied merchandise, that it was at length decreed they should assemble at the base of the hill, in the fertile plain trav ersed by the Arno. The few rough shelters erected for the accommodation of these traders may be considered the original nucleus of the important and splendid city of Florence. Such at least is the traditionary history of its origin generally accepted by the Florentine historians. It would seem that as early as the time of Sulla there had been a Roman colony here; another was sent after the death of Julius Cwsar, and it soon became a thriving town. The Florentini are mentioned by Tacitus, 16 A.D., as sending delegates to Rome, but it was not till the time of Charlemagne that F. began to rise out of obscurity, It was now governed by a political bead with the title of duke, assisted by various subordinate officers, who were elected by the united suff rages of the duke and citizens. In the 11th c., F., and a great part of Tuscany, were bequeathed to pope Gregory VII., by his friend and partisan the countess Matilda, who inherited from her mother, the countess Beatrix, her jurisdiction over the city. Under the protection of Rome, F. speedily adopted the forms and institutions of a free city; and the republican spirit which then arose amongst the people imparted an impulse to national and individual life, and awoke a spirit of ardent patriotism and splendid enter • prise. As early as the 11th c., the Florentines were European traders, and the possess ors of grand commercial depots in the seaports and cities of France and England, and their skill as workers in gold and jewels had grown proverbial. In proportion as papal preponderance increased hi F., that of the empire sank; and in 1113 the citizen forces routed the troops, and slew the delegate of the emperor at Monte Cascioh, near Flor ence. During the bitter wars between pope and empire, F. and all Tuscany seemed to have been saved from the civil feuds which raged throughout Italy between the con tending factions of Guelphs and Ghibellines; the former, adherents of the pope; the latter, of the empire. But in 1215, F, became involved in the great party struggle, owing to a private feud breaking out between two noble families, chiefs of the contend ing principles. A Guelph noble, Buondelmonti, mortally incensed the Ghibelline family of the Amidei, by breaking off his alliance with a daughter of their house, and contract ing marriage with a member of the Guelph family. To avenge this insult, the. Amidei appealed to their powerful kinsmen, the Uberti, and, in fact, to all the Ghibelline party of Florence. Buondelmonti was stabbed to death as he crossed the bridge of the Ponte Vecchio, and was Speedily avenged by the Guelphs in the blood of his enemies. Thus for 33 years was F. distracted by the deeds of bloodshed and violence of these two rival factions, who assumed the names, and adopted the respective causes of Guelph and Ghibelline. See GUELPII AND GHIBELLINE. In 1250, the animosity of these parties seemed somewhat blunted, and public attention was directed to wise internal reforms. Twelve magistrates, or anziani, were appointed in place of the consuls, each of the six sections into which the city was divided being intrusted to two of these magistrates, whose tenure of office was annual. To avoid all local dissensions, two other magis trates, strangers by birth, were elected: the one, invested with supreme .authority in civil and criminal cases, was called the the other, with the title of captain of the people, had the chief command of the militia, in which were enrolled all the youth of the state, who were bound, at the call of this magistrate, to join their company fully equipped for fight: 20 companies defended the town, 96 the country. After the death of the emperor Frederick II., the great protector of the Ghibellines, the Guelph or papal party gradually rose in power in F., and during ten years of their predominance, the city ascended in grandeur and prosperity, until it stood not onlythe first in Tuscany, but one of the first of all Italy. In 1254, the Florentines first coined their noble golden
florin, unequaled at the time for beauty: in weight, a dram, it bore on one side the national emblem, a lily; and on the reverse, the effigy of the popular patron, St. John the Baptist. It commemorated a period of great success in the annals of. F., whose forces had successively humbled the adjoining towns of Siena, Arezzo, Pisa, and Pis toja in 1252, and in 1254 captured Volterra. In 1260, the standard of civil war was again raised by the Ghibellines of F., who, in league with Manfred of Naples, attacked the Guelphs, and cut their forces to pieces in the sanguinarybattle of Monte Aperto. The conquerors entered F. forthwith in the name of Manfred, abolished all trace of the popular institutions, establishing an exclusively aristocratic executive, and even strongly advocated the entire destruction of the city, the hotbed of Guelphism. This barbarous scheme was indignantlyrepudiated by their own famous leader, Farinata degli Uberti, immortalized by Dante for his patriotism. He declared his intention of heading the Guelphs, were such a sacrilege perpetrated by his own party. Pope Urban IV., French by birth, summoned against the Ghibelline Manfred a French army, led by Charles of Valois, to whom he offered the prospective kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Manfred was defeated and slain in the famous battle of Benevento, and Guelph ascendency was restored anew throughout Italy and Florence, Charles fully restored to the Florentines their internal institutions, and received their offered allegiance for ten years, 1266. In 1282, the priori, a new executive power, was established in F.; and in 1293, by the consent of the priori, a higher chief than their own order was elected, With the title of gonfaloniere. In 1300, Dante became one of the priori, and the former feud was recom• menced with new vigor between two factions, who bore the names of Bianchi (whites) and Neri (blacks), Their dissensions were, however, interrupted,-by the appearance of Charles of Valois, sent byBoniface VIII. to restore tranquillity, 1301. Charles espoused the part of the Guelphs or Neri, and sanctioned every outrage on the Bianchi. who were plundered and murdered barbarously, the survivors being exiled and beggared; among these were Dante, and Petracco Aucisa, the father of Petrarca. In 1300, Pistoja was besieged, and taken by famine with great barbarity, In 1315, the Floren tines met with a severe cheek from the Ghibellines of Pisa, under the command of Uguccione della Faggiula; and in 1325, were completely defeated by Uguccione's suc cessor in command, the valiant Castrucci° Castracani, in the battle of Altopascio. F., weakened by long dissensions, and alarmed by Castruccio's threat of marching on the city, appealed to the king of Naples for aid: They received joyfully an officer of the king, entitled the duke of Athens, sent as royal vicar; and such was the public demoralization of the moment, they proclaimed him dictator of the republic, unanimously suppressing the offices of priori and gonfaloniere. The intrigues of this ignoble schemer to overturn the republic being discovered, lie was ignominiously expelled by a general popular rising, and narrowly preserved his life. An attempt to admit a proportion of the nobles into the government signally failed at this time, and only led to renewed animosity between them and the citizens. This was the last effort of the nobles to secure power. See 3Iaechlavelli, book ii. A terrible pest decimated F. in 1348, sweeping off 100,000 of her inhabitants. See Boccaccio, Decameron. The chief power of F. about this time seems to have been alter nately wielded by the democratic families, the Alberti and the Ricci, and by their patrician rivals, the Albizzi, who, for the space of 53 years, guided the republic in the path of independence and progress. In 1406, the ancient and illustrious republic of Pisa (q. v.) fell under the sway of F., after a most heroic resistance. From 1434, the history of F. is intimately bound up with the house of Medici, whose influence supplanted that of the Albizzi. See MEDICI. The Medici were repeatedly banished from F., in conse quence of their aiming at sovereign power; and to their intrigues F. owes her final loss of republican rights and institutions. Pope Clement VII., of the house of Medici, formed a league with the emperor Charles V., by which the liberties of F. were to be extinguished, and the sovereign power to be invested in the pope's bastard son, Alexan der de' Medici. In Sept., 1529, an army of imperialists, under the duke of Orange, entered Tuscany; and on the 8th of Aug., 1530, the siege of F. terminated, after a defense of unexampled devotion and bravery on the part of the citizens. Thus fell the name and form of the republic of F., quenched in the best blood of the city, a sacrifice to a rene gade pope, who employed both foreign robbers and internal traitors to destroy and humiliate the city of his birth. From this period F. loses her distinctive history, and is only known as capital of the grand duchy of Tuscany, pope Clement having conferred on Cosmo de' Medici the ducal dignity. Some idea of the splendor and prosperity of F. as a republic may be had from the fact that her capitalists were so enormously weal thy, they supplied the chief sovereigns of Europe with funds; her manufactures of wool, silk, and gold brocade were exported throughout the world; and besides home centers of commerce, she possessed great commercial establishments in all the countries of Europe. This wonderful prosperity the Florentines owed solely to their indomitable spirit of enterprise. F. was for a time the capital of the new kingdom of Italy, but in 1871, had to yield the honor to Rome. The province of F. or Firenze has an area of 2,260 sq.m., and a pop. of (1871) 766,326.