Florence

Florence is the largest city and the capital of Tuscany, an Italian region. As of 2026, its population of 361,625 makes it the eighth most populous city in Italy. It also serves as the capital of its own metropolitan province, which has 988,494 residents. Eurostat estimates that 696,767 people live in Florence’s urban area.

The wider Metropolitan Area of Florence, Prato, and Pistoia—established in 2000 and covering roughly 4,800 square kilometers—is home to 1.5 million people. During the medieval period, Florence was a major hub for European trade and finance, and it ranked among the wealthiest cities of its time. Many scholars consider it the birthplace of the Renaissance, when it became a leading center for art, culture, commerce, politics, economics, and finance.

Its influence stretched across Italy, Europe, and beyond. The city’s turbulent political history includes rule by the powerful Medici family, as well as numerous religious and republican uprisings. From 1865 to 1871, Florence served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. The Florentine dialect became the foundation of standard Italian, thanks to the prestige of works by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Francesco Guicciardini, and it spread as the language of culture throughout Italy.

Florence lies about 275 kilometers northwest of Rome. It draws millions of tourists annually, and in 1982 UNESCO designated its Historic Centre a World Heritage Site. The city is famous for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, and monuments. It houses numerous museums and galleries, including the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and continues to shape art, culture, and politics.

In 2010, Forbes ranked it among the world’s most beautiful cities because of its artistic and architectural heritage. Florence also plays a key role in Italian fashion, ranking in the top 15 fashion capitals globally according to the Global Language Monitor. It is a major national economic center, a tourist and industrial hub, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s capitals of art and architecture. Florence began as a Roman garrison founded in 59 BC on land previously occupied by an Etruscan settlement whose name is unknown.

Its Latin name meant “the Flourishing Town.” The ethnic variants appear in Florus’s Epitome of Roman History and Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. The old Italian name and the modern Italian name Firenze come from these ancient names. The shift from flo to fio (via a dark L sound) and the reduction from fio to fi are features of Tuscan Italian.

Linguist Giovan Battista Pellegrini argues that Firenze comes from the locative form of the Latin name, though Gerhard Rohlfs disputes this. Florence began as a Roman city. After a long period as a thriving medieval commune focused on trade and banking, it became the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. From the 14th to the 16th centuries, it was one of the most politically, economically, and culturally important cities in Europe and the world.

The language spoken in Florence during the 14th century became the model for what would become Italian, largely because of the works of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, whose Florentine dialect was adopted as the basis for a national literary language. Starting in the late Middle Ages, the gold florin—Florentine currency—financed industrial development across Europe, from Britain to Bruges, Lyon, and Hungary. Florentine bankers funded English kings during the Hundred Years’ War and also financed the papacy, including the construction of its provisional capital in Avignon and, after the papacy’s return to Rome, the city’s reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment.

Florence was home to the Medici, one of Europe’s most important noble families. Lorenzo de’ Medici was seen as a political and cultural mastermind in late 15th-century Italy. Two Medici became popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de’ Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, ruled as regent.

Marie de’ Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII. The Medici ruled as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone in 1737. The Kingdom of Italy, established in 1861, moved its capital from Turin to Florence in 1865, though the capital shifted to Rome in 1871. The Romans founded Florence in 59 BC as a colony for veteran soldiers, built in the style of an army camp.

It lay along the Via Cassia, the main route between Rome and the north, in the fertile Arno valley. The settlement quickly became an important commercial center, and in AD 285 it became the capital of the Tuscia region. Over the following centuries, Florence experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogoth and Byzantine rule, during which the city was fought over and its population fell to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century.

Charlemagne conquered Florence in 774, and it became part of the March of Tuscany, centered on Lucca. The population began to grow again, and commerce prospered. Around 1000 AD, Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residence instead of Lucca. The Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. By 1100, Florence was a commune—a city-state.