View of the City of Florence  This view is from the Duomo looking across at the Palazzo of the Podestà and the church of the Franciscans, Santa Croce. 

This view of Florence looks in the opposite direction, towards the Palazzo Vecchio. 

This view looks towards the eastern hills and the Etruscan city of Fiesole.  These three views cover most of Renaissance Florence.

Decline of the Landed Aristocracy

Governance of the City

Condottieri
commune: A commune was a self-governing town; legitimacy of the government was established by a foundation charter or an oath by the citizens of the commune to render to each other mutual aid.
gilds (also spelled guild): A corporation of artisans, merchants, bankers, lawyers who regulated their trade or industry.  The primary function of the gild was to set standards of workmanship and to prevent non-gild members from working in a commune.  The gilds played an important political role in the Italian communes. In Florence, only members of gilds were enfranchised, that is able to exercise political rights and hold public office.

Building of the City

Map of City Today
The Roman City can be seen at the center of Florence.  It is still visible in the parallel streets, vertically and horizontally, that were typical of cities that Roman founded.  This map highlights the Roman city on the map of the present city.
In Twelfth-Century Florence expanded the walls of the city outside the Roman walls and extended the walls to the other side of the Arno.  This map shows this expansion.
Fourteenth-Century City Walls expanded the city even further.  This map of 1843 shows that the fourteenth-century walls created space that was not yet filled in the mid-nineteenth century.

Bargello (Palace of the Podestà)

Florentine Street Scene Today
 
A fresco of a street scene in the fourteenth century.   Detail of Shoe Shop.  This view is taken from a fresco of Ambrogio Lorenzetti that he painted in the city hall of Siena, the Palazzo Publico.  Notice the similarities of style between the Florentine Palazzo Vecchio and the Palazzo Publico.

Palazzo Vecchio (City Hall)

Duomo = cathedral of Florence. Begun in 1298.  The Front Facade was added in the nineteenth century.  The facade was left incomplete for centuries (Engraving of 1684).  Many Florentine churches had incomplete facades (example of the church of the Medici, San Lorenzo)
Cupola, Brunelleschi
Campanile (Bell Tower) of Giotto
Santa Croce (Franciscans)
Santa Maria Novella (Dominicans)
Ponte Vecchio

The wealthy families of Florence competed for the largest residences as earlier families in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries had competed for the largest towers
 
 

Michelangelo

Dante Alighieri, Boccaccio, Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca)