Roman origins
Florence began as Florentia, a colony founded by Julius Caesar around 59 BC to settle army veterans, laid out on the classic Roman grid still faintly visible in the street pattern around the Piazza della Repubblica today. It was a modest provincial town for centuries, its major growth still far in the future.
The medieval commune and the wool trade
By the 12th and 13th centuries, Florence had become a self-governing commune and a genuine economic power, built substantially on the wool trade and, crucially, banking — Florentine banking families developed practices (including early forms of the letter of credit) that made the city a financial capital for much of Europe. This wealth, and the intense rivalry between competing merchant families and factions (Guelphs and Ghibellines, famously), shaped much of the city's medieval political drama.
The rise of the Medici
The Medici family began as bankers, rising to effective control of Florence from the early 1400s without formally abolishing the republic's institutions — a distinctly Florentine kind of power, exercised through patronage, marriage alliances, and enormous spending on art and architecture rather than outright monarchy, at least initially. See our dedicated Medici family guide.
The Renaissance
Florentine wealth, competitive civic pride, and a concentration of extraordinary talent — Brunelleschi, Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, among many others — combined to make the city the epicentre of the Renaissance from the early 1400s. Brunelleschi's dome, completed in 1436 without the modern scaffolding techniques that would seem necessary for its scale, is often cited as a symbolic starting point. See our Renaissance art guide for what actually changed in the art itself.
Later centuries
Florence eventually became a Grand Duchy under Medici and then Habsburg-Lorraine rule, and briefly served as the capital of a newly unified Italy from 1865 to 1871 before the capital moved to Rome. The devastating Arno flood of 1966 damaged an enormous quantity of the city's art and books, prompting an international conservation effort that shaped much of how Florence's heritage is protected today.