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CENTRAL ITALY
TUSCANY (TOSCANA)
Tuscany, like fine wine, has been some time in the making ...with its enchanted landscapes and rolling hills covered with bright yellow fields of sunflowers, olive groves, and grapevines, hill towns, monuments, and art, Tuscany is the Italian region in every visitor's dreams. Its capital city, Florence, is the heart of the Italian Renaissance. By the high Middle Ages, the cities of Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, Pistoia, Lucca, and especially Florence had become wealthy because of textile manufacturing, trade, banking, and agriculture. There were many wars between the city states to conquer territory and power. Gradually, Florence came to overshadow and conquer all other cities in the region. After several experiments with representative government, Florence was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy aristocrats, among whom the Medici family became dominant in the fifteenth century. Under the patronage of these wealthy families, the arts and literature flourished as nowhere else in Europe; this period is known as the Renaissance, the rebirth after the Middle Ages. Florence was the city of such writers as Dante, Petrarch, and Macchiavelli, and artists and engineers such as Botticelli, Giotto, Brunelleschi (who built the magnificent dome on the church of Santa Maria dei Fiori, the a.k.a., the Duomo), Alberti, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo. Because of its dominance in literature, the Florentine language became the literary language of the Italian region and is the language of Italy today. Lorenzo de' Medici, who ruled Florence in the late fifteenth century was perhaps the greatest patron of the arts in the history of the West.
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