Firenze (pilot city)

The Town of Florence

Among the many art towns in Italy, Florence is proud of its rather unique feature: its many palaces, monuments and masterpieces fit in such a narrow area that everything is really walking distance. Mornings in Florence, that ravished Ruskin so much, reveal an unexpected bounty of beauty and charm at every corner.

The town is divided into two parts by the Arno River, flowing from the nearby high chain of the Casentino Mountains towards the coast, and yielding into the Tyrrhenian Sea at Marina di Pisa. No matter how overpowering Florence’s historical past and open-air museums may be, its contemporary companies working in business, fashion, theatre and music make of it a buoyant center of cosmopolitan culture, endeavouring to complete and get over its fame as a wonderful scenery so deeply cherished by tourists and visitors.

Art & Culture

The Renaissance added unparalleled splendor to the fascinating but rather severe looks of the Middle Age Florence. The Medici family (1434- 1737) ensured long periods of peace and prosperity. Bankers and merchants during the Renaissance transformed their medieval, towerlike houses into fashionable palaces and were splendid patrons of religious buildings and of painters, sculptors and architects.

As a result, arts and architecture flourished in an unprecedented development, whose effects we can still enjoy. The completion of the Cathedral, with its gigantic dome built by Brunelleschi, and of the medieval Saint John’s Baptistery with its famous golden doors by Ghiberti are among the many conspicuous remains of that period.

Palazzo Vecchio, facing Piazza della Signoria, has been the center of the Florentine political life for many centuries. A few meters away the beautiful palace of the Uffizi, where we can still admire the countless masterworks of Giotto, Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaello, Tiziano, Caravaggio as well as Van Dyck, Rubens and Rembrandt. After crossing the river on the Ponte Vecchio, with its characteristic old goldsmiths shops, visitors may reach the Oltrarno district with the famous church of Santo Spirito, San Frediano in Cestello and Santa Maria del Carmine. All these treasures are near the convention sites and can be easily reached, in a short but exciting walk.