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While visiting the ruins of Rome during the jubilee celebration in 1300, the banker and chronicler Giovanni Villani (c. 1276–1348) noted the well-known history of the city, its monuments and achievements, and was then inspired to write a universal history of his own city of Florence.
In the 15th century, Florence was among the largest cities in Europe, with a population of 60,000, and was considered rich and economically successful. [27] Cosimo de' Medici was the first Medici family member to essentially control the city from behind the scenes.
Florence, Piazza del Mercato Vecchio (1555), fresco by Stradanus, Palazzo Vecchio, Sala di Gualdrada. The Italian Renaissance was remarkable in economic development. Venice and Genoa were the trade pioneers, first as maritime republics and then as regional states, followed by Milan, Florence, and the rest of northern Italy.
Trade in the early Roman Empire allowed Rome to become as vast and great as it did. Emperor Augustus , despite his intense public and private spending, took control of trade from the government and expanded Roman influence by opening new trading markets in overseas areas such as Britain , Germany , and Africa . [ 53 ]
The House of Medici (English: / ˈ m ɛ d ɪ tʃ i / MED-itch-ee, UK also / m ə ˈ d iː tʃ i / mə-DEE-chee; [4] Italian: [ˈmɛːditʃi]) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first consolidated power in the Republic of Florence under Cosimo de' Medici and his grandson Lorenzo "the Magnificent" during the first half of the 15th century.
The city of Florence was established in 59 BC by Julius Caesar. Since 846 AD, the city had been part of the Marquisate of Tuscany. After Margravine Matilda of Tuscany died in 1115, the city did not submit readily to her successor, Rabodo (r. 1116–1119), who was killed in a dispute with the city.
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The Latin settlement of Rome also was a city-state, founded in the 753 BC. Rome eventually created many colonies and municipi on earlier Etruscan, Umbrian, or Celtic settlements throughout Italy. The network of Roman cities in Italy survived the fall of the Western Roman Empire and provided the basis for the re-emergence of city-states in the ...