100 Fun Facts About Florence

Florence is the capital of which Italian region?

It is the country's eighth most populous city, with about 362,000 people in 2026.

Florence was founded by the Romans in 59 BC as what?

Laid out like an army camp on the Via Cassia, it became capital of the Tuscia region in AD 285.

The Latin name Florentia means what?

The modern Firenze comes from Fiorenza via typical Tuscan sound shifts.

Florence stands on which river?

The river powered the textile mills and gave access to the sea, and it flooded catastrophically in 1966.

From 1865 to 1871 Florence served as what?

It took over from Turin and lost the role to Rome; the old market square was rebuilt as Piazza della Repubblica.

The Florentine dialect became the basis of standard Italian largely thanks to which writers?

The three Tuscans' 14th-century masterpieces made the local speech the model for a national literary language.

The gold florin was first struck in Florence in which year?

It carried 3.5 grams of nearly pure gold and kept the same design until 1533, financing industry from Bruges to Hungary.

Which Medici was the first to control Florence 'from behind the scenes'?

The family's role as bankers to the pope underpinned its rise; the Albizzi had run the city before them.

Per Wikipedia, Lorenzo 'the Magnificent' commissioned works from which three artists?

He died in 1492; his son Piero was exiled two years later and the republic was restored.

How many popes did the Medici family produce?

Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV and Leo XI, plus two queens of France, Catherine and Marie.

The Dominican friar Savonarola was hanged and burned in which Florentine square in 1498?

He had accused Pope Alexander VI of corruption; his ashes were thrown in the Arno.

In 1527 Florentines expelled the Medici and named whom 'King of Florence'?

The theocratic republic lasted until imperial and papal armies restored the Medici in 1530.

What title did Cosimo I de' Medici receive over the whole region in 1569?

The Medici grand dukes ruled until Gian Gastone died in 1737 and the region passed to the House of Lorraine.

Which political handbook did a Florentine ex-diplomat write after his imprisonment and exile in 1513?

Its author was later commissioned by the Medici to write the Florentine Histories.

Florence Cathedral was begun in 1296 to whose design?

He also designed the town hall; the cathedral took 140 years and was completed under Brunelleschi's dome in 1436.

Brunelleschi's cupola on the cathedral is still what?

It was the first great dome in Europe since the Pantheon and Hagia Sophia; the wool guild ran the 1418 competition he won.

Besides the dome, Brunelleschi is famous for developing which mathematical technique in art?

He trained as a goldsmith and sculptor, and lost the 1401 Baptistery doors competition to Ghiberti.

Michelangelo said the Baptistery's east doors were beautiful enough to stand where?

Ghiberti's gilded bronze panels have been called the Gates of Paradise ever since; the originals are now in the cathedral museum.

Michelangelo's David was carved between 1501 and 1504 and stands how tall?

It was the first colossal marble statue since antiquity, originally meant for the cathedral roofline.

In 1873 the original David was moved from the square outside the Palazzo Vecchio to where?

A replica went back on the square in 1910; the gallery also holds his unfinished Slaves for the tomb of Julius II.

The Uffizi was built from 1560 by Vasari for Cosimo I to serve as what?

The name simply means 'offices'; it also housed the state archive before becoming a gallery.

Which Botticelli painting in the Uffizi did climate protesters glue images to in February 2024?

The Uffizi sold over 1.93 million tickets in 2014 and regularly sells out.

The Vasari Corridor, about a kilometre long, was built in 1565 so Cosimo I could do what?

It runs from the Palazzo Vecchio over the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti and was finished in five months for a wedding.

A 1565 decree still in force bans which trade from the shops on the Ponte Vecchio?

Butchers, tanners and farmers first occupied the shops; only goldsmiths and jewellers have been allowed since.

Why is the Ponte Vecchio the only medieval bridge left in Florence?

They demolished every other Arno bridge in August 1944 to slow the British Eighth Army; the current bridge dates from around 1345.

Who liberated Florence on 4 August 1944?

Hitler had declared it an open city a month earlier; Tuscan partisans fought alongside the Allies.

The great flood of the Arno that damaged millions of books and artworks struck on which date?

Between 3 and 4 million books and 14,000 artworks were hit; volunteer 'Mud Angels' from around the world helped clean up.

What were the volunteers who rescued art after the 1966 flood nicknamed?

Small placards on walls around the city still mark the high-water line.

The Palazzo Vecchio's 94-metre campanile is off-centre because its architect built it on top of what?

The Foraboschi tower, La Vacca, was incorporated as the substructure when work began in 1299.

The church nicknamed the Temple of the Italian Glories holds the tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and whom?

Rossini and Foscolo are there too; Dante, exiled in 1302, is buried in Ravenna and has only a cenotaph.

Stendhal syndrome is named for the author's 1817 visit to which Florentine church?

Psychiatrist Graziella Magherini coined the term in 1989 after seeing more than a hundred cases among visitors.

Dante was condemned to exile from Florence in which year?

A White Guelph, he never returned and died in Ravenna in 1321.

Piazzale Michelangelo, the viewpoint above the city, was laid out in 1869 by which architect?

It was part of the Risanamento while Florence was capital, and holds bronze copies of David and the Medici Chapel figures.

Calcio storico fiorentino, the brutal costumed ball game, is played each June in front of which church?

The final falls on 24 June, feast of the city's patron John the Baptist; a famous match was played in defiance of Charles V's siege in 1530.

Which two inventions in music does Wikipedia credit to Florence?

Jacopo Peri's Dafne was the first opera in the late 1500s, and Bartolomeo Cristofori built the piano in 1709.

Bistecca alla fiorentina is a large T-bone from which breed of cattle?

It weighs 1.2 to 1.5 kg, is grilled over charcoal and served very rare; lampredotto (stomach) is the street-food classic.

Which fashion house has been based in Florence since 1928?

Gucci, Roberto Cavalli and Emilio Pucci are also headquartered in the city, one of the world's top 15 fashion capitals.

Fiorentina football club is nicknamed the Viola because of what?

The club was founded by a merger in 1926 and has played at the Stadio Artemio Franchi since 1931.

The Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti were laid out for whom?

They became a model for European court gardens, and hold a fountain of Cosimo's court dwarf riding a tortoise.

Around 1325, at its medieval peak, Florence's urban population may have reached what?

About 25,000 people worked in the wool trade at the time.

The Revolt of the Ciompi in 1378 was an uprising by whom?

After it was crushed the Albizzi family dominated the city until the Medici displaced them in 1434.

UNESCO listed the historic centre of Florence as a World Heritage Site in which year?

The city lies about 275 km northwest of Rome and draws millions of tourists a year.

Which Florentine's map did Columbus use to sell his voyage to the Spanish monarchs?

Toscanelli was a student of Brunelleschi; the city's airport is named after Vespucci, who gave America its name.

In 2016 Florence's mayor passed a law requiring restaurants to use Tuscan products and rejected which chain's bid to open in Piazza del Duomo?

The aim was to protect traditional foods from tourist-driven homogenisation.

What sets alight the Brindellone cart that white oxen pull to the Duomo on Easter Sunday?

The 'Scoppio del Carro'; a smooth flight of the dove is taken as good luck for the year.

Which ruler conquered Florence in 774, making it part of the March of Tuscany centred on Lucca?

Under earlier Ostrogoth and Byzantine fighting the population had fallen to as few as 1,000 people.

The Medici cousins who retook Florence in 1512 later became which two popes?

Both commissioned Michelangelo, including the Laurentian Library and the Medici Chapel.

By roughly how much did the Black Death of 1348 reduce Florence's population?

Around 1325 the city may have held 120,000 people, with about 25,000 supported by the wool industry.

Roughly how many visitors does the province of Florence receive each year?

From April to October tourists outnumber locals, and the Ponte Vecchio and San Lorenzo Market are plagued by pickpockets.

What did Mayor Dario Nardella start doing to church steps in 2017 to deter picnicking tourists?

He complained of visitors who 'sit down on church steps, eat their food and leave rubbish strewn on them'.

Who finished Giotto's Campanile in 1359, leaving off the spire Giotto had planned?

Giotto died in 1337 with only the first storey built; without the spire the tower ended up well short of its designed 122 m.

Florentines once believed the Baptistery began as a Roman temple to which god?

Excavations instead found a large Roman house under the site; the building's true origins lie in the 11th or 12th century.

The Baptistery's earliest bronze doors, on the south side, were led by which sculptor?

Begun in 1330, they took six years and show twenty scenes from the life of John the Baptist, the city's patron.

Who designed the upper façade of Santa Maria Novella, completed in 1470?

Its S-shaped corner scrolls had no precedent and were copied on churches all over Italy.

The Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica, called the world's oldest pharmacy, dates from when?

The Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella were already selling rose water as a disinfectant during epidemics by 1381.

The pharmacy's oldest scent, Acqua della Regina, was made in 1533 for whose wedding?

She was marrying the future Henry II of France; the formula is attributed to the apothecary Renato Bianco.

Before it became a museum in 1865, what was the Bargello?

A Pazzi conspirator was hanged from its windows in 1479, and it stayed the police headquarters until 1859.

Donatello's bronze David in the Bargello is celebrated as the first what since antiquity?

He wears only a laurel-topped hat and boots and rests a foot on Goliath's severed head.

The New Sacristy at San Lorenzo holds Medici tombs carved with personifications of what?

The grand tombs went to two lesser Medici dukes; those planned for Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother were never begun.

Which Medici pontiff commissioned the Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo in 1523?

He vetoed a skylight over the vestibule for fear of leaks; the famous staircase was built by Ammannati in 1559.

Brunelleschi's Ospedale degli Innocenti, the first pure Renaissance building, was what?

The silk guild paid for it, and Andrea della Robbia's blue roundels of swaddled babies advertise its purpose.

Orsanmichele, ringed by guild statues, was built in the 1330s to serve as what?

The name contracts Orto di San Michele, the kitchen garden of a church that once stood there; the ground floor became a church around 1400.

Who designed the Palazzo Medici, the family's first grand palace, begun in 1444?

Brunelleschi's rival design was rejected as too extravagant; the Riccardi family bought the palace in 1659.

What did Florentines do to the Neptune fountain's statue to celebrate Italy winning the World Cup?

Ammannati's 1574 fountain has suffered from day one: locals used it as a washbasin, and in 2005 a climber snapped off a hand and broke the trident.

The Loggia dei Lanzi takes its name from what?

Its roof was later turned into a terrace from which the Medici princes could watch ceremonies in the square.

Cellini's bronze Perseus in the Loggia dei Lanzi holds up whose severed head?

Seen from behind, the back of Perseus's helmet hides a self-portrait of Cellini.

What do visitors do to the bronze boar Il Porcellino to ensure they return to Florence?

Pietro Tacca cast it shortly before 1634 after a Hellenistic marble now in the Uffizi; the boar on show today is a 1998 copy.

Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici, left the family art to the state on what condition?

Her bequest is why the Uffizi and Pitti collections are still in the city; she died in 1743, ending the dynasty.

Count Negroni's 1919 Florentine cocktail swapped an Americano's soda water for what?

The bar was the Caffè Casoni on Via de' Tornabuoni, and the drink was first known as an 'Americano in the style of Count Negroni'.

Which Medici court architect is credited with the precursor of Florentine gelato?

He also designed the Forte di Belvedere, the Boboli grotto and a new kind of incendiary grenade.

Why does the façade of Florence's great Franciscan basilica carry a Star of David?

Niccolò Matas wanted burial inside with the greats but was laid under the threshold instead; the church is the world's largest Franciscan one.

Whose huge painted Crucifix, wrecked by the 1966 flood, now hangs in a refectory?

Giotto, his reputed pupil, frescoed the same basilica's Bardi and Peruzzi chapels.

The Brancacci Chapel, the 'Sistine Chapel of the early Renaissance', is in which church?

Masaccio painted its Expulsion from Eden at about 21; he died in Rome aged 27 and Filippino Lippi finished the cycle decades later.

The lost Battle of Anghiari mural was painted for which room of the Palazzo Vecchio?

Its painter mixed wax into his pigments and tried drying the wall with braziers; legend says Vasari hid what survived behind a false wall.

Antonio Meucci built an acoustic telephone in 1834 for which Florentine workplace?

The theatre, built in 1656, was the first with tiers of boxes and is considered Italy's oldest opera house.

Which Florence-born journalist called Khomeini a tyrant and shed her chador mid-interview?

Kissinger called his interview with her 'the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press'.

Which mayor of Florence (2009-14) went straight from city hall to prime minister of Italy?

At 39 he was the youngest premier Italy had ever had; as mayor he halved the city council and installed 500 free Wi-Fi points.

In 1487 Lorenzo de' Medici was presented with a giraffe by the sultan of which land?

Lorenzo dangled the animal before Anne of France as a diplomatic sweetener while Florence sought direct trade with Cairo.

Santa Maria Nuova hospital, founded in 1288 and still open, was endowed by whose father?

It claims to be the world's oldest hospital still operating; Henry VII of England asked for copies of its rules.

Fra Angelico frescoed the cells of which Florentine convent, later home to Savonarola?

The Medici paid some 40,000 florins for its rebuilding, and it also holds the tomb of the philosopher Pico della Mirandola.

Whose face is the hooded Nicodemus thought to show in the Pietà in the cathedral museum?

He began it around age 72 without a commission and in 1555 attacked it in frustration, breaking off limbs; Christ's left leg is still missing.

The Marzocco, Florence's heraldic lion, rests a paw on a shield bearing what?

Live lions were kept at the city's expense from the Middle Ages until 1771, and Pisan prisoners were made to kiss the statue in 1364.

Ponte Santa Trinita, rebuilt in 1958 after being blown up in 1944, is the oldest what?

The head of its statue of Spring was fished out of the river in 1961, seventeen years after the bridge was destroyed.

In Forster's A Room with a View, what do Lucy and George witness in a Florentine square?

Lucy faints, and George throws her blood-spattered photographs into the river; the 1908 novel ends with the couple back in Florence.

In the 2001 film Hannibal, Lecter hides in Florence as a library curator under what alias?

He disembowels Inspector Pazzi and hangs him from the Palazzo Vecchio, echoing the fate of the real Pazzi conspirators in 1478.

Which Renaissance genius builds gadgets for assassin Ezio in Assassin's Creed II?

The game recreates Florence, Venice, San Gimignano and Forlì, and one mission lets the player fly his flying machine.

The Accademia della Crusca, the oldest linguistic academy, takes its name from what?

Founded in 1583, it published its Vocabolario in 1612, the model for the dictionaries of France, Spain, Germany and England.

Fiorentina's Stadio Artemio Franchi, opened in 1931, was designed by which engineer?

Its 70-metre Tower of Marathon carries the flagstaff; the ground hosted World Cup matches in both 1934 and 1990.

Savonarola's Bonfire of the Vanities on 7 February 1497 was staged on which day?

Mirrors, cosmetics, playing cards, musical instruments and books by Boccaccio went into the flames.

Botticelli is buried in the church of Ognissanti near which woman, reputedly his muse?

The Vespucci family chapel there has a fresco said to include a childhood portrait of Amerigo, who also lies in the church.

Under Peter Leopold, the state ruled from Florence was the first to abolish what in 1786?

The anniversary is still marked every 30 November with a regional feast day; he also ordered every instrument of execution destroyed.

Which cousin murdered Florence's first duke in 1537 after luring him with a fake tryst?

The duke bit off part of his killer's finger in the struggle; Lorenzino fled to Venice and was himself killed there in 1548.

Florentine hopes in the 1530 siege died at which battle, where Francesco Ferruccio was killed?

Michelangelo had been in charge of the city's fortifications; Florence surrendered a week later and the Medici were restored.

The Medici Bank, Europe's largest in its prime, was founded in 1397 by whom?

Branches followed in Rome, Venice, Geneva, Bruges, London and Lyon; the bank fell with the family's exile in 1494.

The cathedral's marble front was only finished in 1887, to whose neo-Gothic design?

The half-built medieval front was torn down in 1587 on Francesco I's orders, and the wall stood bare for three centuries.

The 1478 Pazzi conspiracy struck at the Medici brothers where?

Giuliano died; Lorenzo escaped into the sacristy, and Archbishop Salviati was hanged from the windows of the town hall.

After his 1633 trial, Galileo lived under house arrest at his villa where, near Florence?

His daughters were nuns in the convent of San Matteo there; Maria Celeste took over his penance of weekly psalms.

Guccio Gucci opened his first Florence shop in 1921 after working as a bellhop where?

His first shop on Via della Vigna Nuova sold imported leather luggage; the famous canvas came from wartime leather shortages.

Pinocchio's creator Carlo Lorenzini, a Florentine, took his pen name Collodi from what?

He fought as a volunteer in the wars of independence and founded a satirical paper that was censored before turning to children's stories.

Florence Nightingale, named after the city, was born in 1820 in which house there?

Her elder sister was likewise named Parthenope after the Greek name for Naples, where she was born.