The known history of Florence begins in 59 BC with the founding of a village named Florentia for Roman veterans. Seat of a diocese from the fourth century, the city went through periods of Byzantine domination, Ostrogoths, Lombards and Franca, in which people sometimes fell to just 1,000 people.

Starting from the tenth century the city grew, and by 1115 it became a municipality. In the thirteenth century it was divided by the internal struggle between the Ghibellines, supporters of the Emperor Holy Roman Empire, and the Guelphs, in favor of the Roman Papacy. The latter won (Colle Val d'Elsa 17 June 1269), but soon divided internally into "Whites and Blacks."

The internal political conflict did not prevent the city to grow up to become one of the most powerful and prosperous in Europe, assisted by its own gold currency, the florin (introduced in 1252), the revocation of its rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and purchased by Florence in 1406), and its merchant power resulting from an anti-aristocratic constitution (1293).

Florence during the centuries reigned over the whole of Tuscany, with the exception of the Republic of Lucca, which remained independent and sovereign until the eighteenth century (with the arrival in Italy of Napoleon Bonaparte) and the Duchy of Massa and Principality of Carrara, independent until 1829, when it was absorbed by the Duchy of Modena.

Faced with an estimated population of 80,000 people before the black plague of 1348 (immediately after Venice, and just before Milan and Bologna, was the largest city of the Italian population), 25,000 people worked in the wool. In 1345 Florence was the scene of a strike by the Ciompi, who in 1378 organized a brief revolt against oligarchic rule in the city. After the crackdown, the city fell under the domination of the family Albizi (1382-1434), bitter enemies, but also precursors of the Medici.

During the fifteenth century Florence alone had an income higher than that of England, thanks to large industries and banks Florentine referred, there were eighty. between headquarters and branches, the last scattered across much of Europe.

The first period of Medici domination ended with the return of a republican government, influenced by the teachings of radical Dominican prior Girolamo Savonarola (who was executed in 1498 and that before he died he left a treatise on the government of Florence), in which words are found often topics that will be the subject of religious controversy of the centuries following.

The extinction of the Medici dynasty and the ascension in 1737 of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine and husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, led the inclusion of Tuscany in the territories of the Habsburg sphere of influence.

The reign of the dynasty of Austria finished first at the hands of France and then finally when in 1859, Tuscany was annexed as the Kingdom of Sardinia just before that became the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Florence took place in Turin as the capital of Italy in 1865 at the request of Napoleon III under the Convention of September until the field role was transferred to Rome six years later, when it was annexed to the kingdom. In the nineteenth century the population of Florence doubled and tripled in the twentieth with the growth of tourism, commerce, financial services and industry.

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Source: wikipedia