With this tour we offer you a fantastic journey from the late Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance, exploring the entire historic center of Florence and tracing the significant political, social, and economic changes that brought about this unique season in history and art characterized by technical innovations, revivals of classical cultural forms and ideals, and above all a new centrality of man and his resources.

Important subjects of our discussion include the rise of the merchant class from the 13th century onward, the development and extension of commerce, the creation of banking and financial structures in all of Europe, the constitution of Corporations—or craft guilds—born in order to manage the interests of the different professions, the rapid turnover of republican governments through which these new groups acquired power, and above all the construction of elaborate palaces, both public and private, that affirmed their social and political prestige. The broader diffusion of fabrics, wool, leather, jewels, knives, sugar, and soap along with new products like mirrors, books, and personal clocks brought significant changes to the daily life of the citizens of Florence, or at least those of the merchant, entrepreneurial, and professional classes, and of course to the nobles. The grand civic and human ideals that animated the Florentine Renaissance, the seasons of Humanism with its philosophical fervor of study and rediscovery of the culture and art of antiquity, made for an extraordinary concentration of artists and of art, not accidentally convening in Florence thus making this one of the high points in history.

Ospedale degli Innocenti
The Ospedale of the innocents, or orphanage, in Piazza of the Santissima Annuziata is the first expression of the architectonic principles of Brunelleschi and the first fully renaissance work designed to create a symmetrical space based on the proportional ratio of its component parts and applying mathematical principles to its projection. Built between 1419 and 1424 and financed by the guilds of the silk makers and of the goldsmiths, the Ospedale of the Innocenti, was the first orphanage in the world and it was born, not by chance, in a period when the Church and civil society sought to contain the widespread phenomenon of infanticide. Since babies born out of wedlock were considered the fruit of sin, the women who bore them, often out of poverty and fear, suffocated them immediately after birth. Thus the famous revolving door came about, permitting anonymous, clandestine contact between the inside and outside of the building and creating a mechanism for these poor women to abandon the newborn to the care of the orphanage and the beneficence of the city's newly rich. The building's beautiful arcade with half-round arches as opposed to pointed arches of Gothic architecture, and its sober elegance became a widespread model in Europe.

Michelangelo's David and the gallery of the Accademia
From there we will reach the Accademia delle Belle Arti(the Academy of Fine Arts) that houses some splendid sculptures by Michelangelo, spanning the different periods and creative phases in the life of Florence and the great master. David, the young mythological hero about to unleash the strike that will kill the giant Goliath, has the force of beauty and of wisdom seen in his far-reaching gaze. It is a masterpiece of equilibrium, harmony, and idealized classical beauty that his contemporaries considered proof that he was illuminated by divine grace. And moments of grace are what Michelangelo managed to retrieve from hours of torment, as we will see suggested in his "Captives." Rodin, among others, was strongly influenced by these disquieting and modern works.

Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery
Next is the Piazza of the Duomo, or cathedral, with its splendid Baptistery rebuilt with an octagonal plan in the 12th century. The Baptistery has, in addition to beautiful mosaics, the celebrated bronze doors by Ghiberti. These masterpieces of the great goldsmith will take us into the revolution in art that characterized the period. The commission for the doors was given to him after an impassioned competition that included Donatello, who was probably excluded because the designs he presented for the competition were too innovative. Then we will admire and seek to comprehend the magnificent architecture of the cathedral and its dome. The vast open space at the crossing where the dome was to be raised remained uncovered for 125 years before Brunelleschi set his genius to work and employed audacious techniques to erect the largest dome since the Pantheon. We are in the golden age of the city, the time in which Florentine banks, fabrics, and trades are the most famous in Europe.

Orsanmichele and Palazzo Davanzati
The various merchant and trade characteristics that survive in the Florence of today are only the memory of the fervor of commercial activity that animated Florence from the 1300s onward. The Florence of the Merchants will be explored with discussions of the seven Major Guilds (the wool guild, the silk guild, the furriers, the doctors, the herbalists, the judges, and the notaries), the interests of the entrepreneurs and of the professionals supporting their activity, and dominant role of these classes. These themes will come out in our explanation of the various phases of the beautiful Orsanmichele. The building today is a church but it once also housed the market and granary, and it witnessed the construction - at the expense of the most important guilds - of statues for the facade, realized by great artists such as Donatello who carved the splendid St. George. Such works were intended to promote the image of the guilds and their social role well beyond the borders of Florence. Moving on to Palazzo Davanzati, we are presented with a palace that shows a new typology for the palazzo. Its innovations will be readily apparent as it stands directly across the street from the house-tower type of architecture typical of the middle ages. The spaces and architectonic elements are organized according to new interests in rational measures, and new desires for light, spacious volumes, and demonstrations of social and civic importance. The ground floor was dedicated to commercial activity, the upper floors for living space, a grand gallery crowned the palace, and the family crest was displayed at the entrance. This plan was repeated again and again and it will help us understand the private as well as the public life of the great merchant families of Renaissance Florence.

After a good lunch in a neighborhood restaurant, with a nice glass of wine and Tuscan specialties we will continue the tour.

Palazzo of the Signoria
Following the now-luxurious street, the via dei Clazaiuoli, that like many streets in this neighborhood carries in its name the memory of a former trade. In this case it refers to the makers of the calze, the typical knitted pants in vogue in the 1400s. The street takes us to the Piazza of the Signoria (or lords), the political heart of the Renaissance city. Here we will consider the political dynamics from the 13th century onward, the affirmation of republican institutions led by the merchants and constituting a form of autonomous city power as opposed to control by the Empire or the Church, the construction of the Palazzo of the Signoria as the seat of the Priors (the high magistrates of the government), the infiltration and prevalence in these institutions of the Medici family—a family of powerful merchants and great art patrons. The piazza was also the site of the impassioned preaching of Girolamo Savonarola, Dominican friar and severe critic of the worldly excesses of dress and lifestyle, who captured something of the disquiet stirring in the souls of this time of great change. The piazza would be the site of his death in 1498, when he was burned at the stake.

Gallery of the Uffizi
Then it will be time to visit the gallery of the Uffizi and to encounter many of the artists who made the city famous. The masterpieces of Giotto, Filippo Lippi, Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Michelangelo, and Caravaggio will give us ideas, emotions, and immortal stories. Thus we will make a journey into the changes that led Renaissance artists and men to see God and themselves in a new way, giving new relevance to man, his experience, form, and actions - both human and divine. In these paintings the figures and actions of Jesus, Mary, and the saints become humanized, they come to be represented in naturalistic three-dimensional spaces as opposed to the abstract and otherworldly settings typical of the middle ages. And while artistic representations show the baby Jesus tenderly embracing his Mother, the society as a whole took on modern values and habits. One of the objectives of our visit to the Uffizi will be the understanding and appreciation of art and its language.

Basilica of Santa Croce
Piazza Santa Croce was traditionally a site of popular festivals. Long before the piazza was created, the Florentines met here for various city tournaments in addition to gathering to hear the preaching of the Franciscans in an oratory dedicated to the Santa Croce (Holy Cross). We will consider the vicissitudes that led to the construction of the basilica designed by Arnolfo di Cambio toward the end of the13th century. We will discuss the spatial characteristics of the church, its gothic emphasis on light, sense of openness and reduced mass. We will also be able to admire the frescoes of Giotto in the Stories of St. Francis, the wooden Crucifix by Donatello, the adjacent cloister and the Pazzi Chapel, which is an early Renaissance architectural jewel by Brunelleschi. In strong contrast to the church, we will see Brunelleschi stake out the ideals of the new Renaissance style of proportionate breadth to height, clear spatial arrangement with evident structural elements and revival of ancient central plan. And finally, the Basilica also contains numerous tombs of illustrious characters, including those of Dante, Machiavelli, and above all Michelangelo, who died in Rome but his body was spirited away by the Florentines and brought here to be mourned and buried by the whole population.

Ponte Vecchio
With this bridge - reconstructed in 1345 after a terrible flood destroyed the previous one, which had stood there since the end of the 12th century - we come back again to our central theme of the Florence of the merchants. Here, for centuries, there were fish-sellers, butchers, and leather artisans. It is only since the end of the 16th century that these shops were substituted for the more dignified and less malodorous goldsmith shops and jewelers. But at this point it is better to let ourselves be carried by the slow course of the river and its memories so that we can savor the emotion of a journey of the mind and heart into the culture and art of magical Florence.