Exactly what the title says. It is a biography of Florence from 59BC to 1992. It touches on most of the high points and gives a decent overview of the growth and power holders of the city. Florence is beautiful and this is a good beginner history of the city. ( )

34. [144758::Florence: The Biography of a City] by [[Christopher Hibbert]]
OPD: 1993
format: illustrated 383-page paperback
acquired: 2000 (in Florence?) read: May 22-29 time reading: 18:45, 3.0 mpp
rating: 3
genre/style: popular history theme: Italy
about the author: 1924-2008, English popular historian and WWII veteran, born in Enderby, Leicestershire.

So, we bought this Florence, on our honeymoon. 22.5 years later I finally have read it (shortly before we return). It's... ok. Very 1990's in style and mindset. A little tough to read, a little fact heavy and dry. The notes are designed to help guide you through places, but this book is physically gigantic and really impractical to carry around for that. So, the notes are merely hard to read. But the book captures a bit of everything and the history here is fascinating. The book has its moments. It was the right book for me. Struggling to get caught up in any book, I was able to press on through this and even look forward to getting back to it when I set it down.

2023
https://www.librarything.com/topic/348551#8155374 ( )

Ilustrovaný úvod do dějin města od doby římské po druhou světovou válku i průvodce městem z pera jednoho z nejlepších anglických autorů v oboru populárních historických životopisů. ( )

This thing arrived with a thud! It looks like a textbook in size, shape, and weight. Unlike a textbook, however, it doesn't actually include sources. No, those little footnotes you see throughout are actually references to an index of architectural and cultural sites in Florence--which is cool, but what the heck? Why aren't you citing any sources?! There is a Bibliography and a traditional Index, but it's such an odd thing in something so textbook-y.

The book mostly gets the job--of giving this ignorant foreigner a crash course in Florentine history--done. Naturally, the Medicis and the Renaissance take up a major portion of the book, and dang if there aren't some eerie parallels to modern American society. I was actually quite impressed with Florence's early government, which included short terms for representatives from guilds and actually required that their leaders come from outside the city (to put this all very vaguely because it's been about two weeks since I finished the book)...but then the Medicis came in. At least none of them seemed, based on what I read in this book, not to be complete corrupt tyrants. Or maybe they just seem that way because they funded the arts and didn't declare martial law. Maybe we forgive them much because they used their wealth to leave lasting works of architectural and artistic beauty, something that today's wealthiest government influencers don't do.

The book is thin on Florence's beginning, which I can forgive, but I share the frustration of many of the reviewers that once we hit the 1700s, much of the book seems to focus on foreign visitors--understandable during the Napoleonic years and while ruled by foreigners, but it still gives the impression that after 1500 years of political intrigue and cultural flowering the Florentines themselves stopped being active participants in their own government and culture. To give the most egregious example, Hibbert skates from 1944 to 1961 in less than a full page (p. 304). Was there really nothing worth commenting on in the wake of WWII? Rebuilding? Economics? Post-war, post-fascist government? Just because it's not Renaissance or military action doesn't mean it can't be interesting.

Anyway, this was an excellent book to read before my trip, but I can't say I'd recommend it for any other purpose unless you're working your way up to becoming a Florence fanatic!

Quote/Thought Roundup

p 25) Training to be a banker in medieval Florence was a grueling process, but with a four-year-old niece, this part made me pause:
At the age of seven, boys were expected to be able to read and write, to speak a little Latin and to count with an abacus...
Just how much reading and writing are we talking here? How much pen control is even possible?

p. 42) Ah, here's the part about the government (in the early 1300s) that fascinated me. To sum up: eligible guild members--provided they had not recently served and a family member was not serving simultaneously--had their names picked out of a bag every two months to form a nine-person council who lived and worked together for the next two months, consulting with other elected councils when necessary. Hibbert explains there was still, essentially, an oligarchy, given the requirements for guild membership.

p. 65) Hibbert lets us know he is a Republican:
[By the 1350s (?)] the word [Ghibelline] had taken on so sinister a meaning that to be accused of Ghibelline sentiments was to be charged with holding views and condoning behavior of the most disgraceful kind, rather as in our own day the extreme left will condemn certain attitudes as 'Fascist' with little regard to what Fascism originally meant.
Seriously, dude? You did not have to make that political. I'm sure there are plenty of other similes you could have made. Plus, hey, look to your own house for words that have lost their original meaning!

p. 82) So apparently Pope John XXIII was a former pirate who was deposed on accusations of murdering Pope Alexander V and seducing 200 women. Freed from prison in Germany by a Medici ransom, set up for life in a Medici house, and given a Medici-funded memorial in the Baptistry itself. I want to know more about this guy!
[Edit: Wikipedia says that John was a Pisan antipope (which is why he isn't the result if you search for "Pope John XXII") and his brothers were hanged for piracy. He was in the military and was accused of piracy during his deposition from the papacy. So slightly less cool than Hibbert makes him sound though he was in the military.

p. 129) Francesco Guicciardini described Lorenzo Medici as "a benevolent tyrant in a constitutional republic." What an odd thing to think about. But drop the benevolent part and I can see hints of a similar thing happening in the U.S., where the presidency has been gaining more and more power at the expense of actual representative government. So not that unfamiliar, I guess, minus the all-out tyranny. We do at least, for now, have safeguards against that.

p. 157) The descriptions of the Bonfires of the Vanities were frightening. Again, I could see parallels between the type of charismatic speaker Savonarola was and some religious and governmental leaders are today.

p. 213) Hibbert's later focus on tourists and travelers was annoying, but at the same time it did allow for some observations that locals used to the way things are probably wouldn't have thought remarkable...like the fact that people spoke through the opera (though were they Italians or visitors?) and that it was acceptable for a woman to be accompanied to social functions by a male attendant who was not her husband while her own husband played the role for another woman.

p. 276) Of a Florentine festival with racing chariots, one unimpressed traveler remarked that "one may witness the same any fine evening in New York, between two drunk Irish cartmen on their way home." Ah, New York drivers...they never change, do they?

p. 285) Hibbert seems to assume that his readers know a good bit about Mussolini's Italy already. He mentions, for example, "the excess of the black-shirted squadristi" but doesn't explain what these are. What are these "excesses"? What exactly is a "Fasci", which I'm guessing is where the term "fascist" comes from? Seems kind of important, especially if you're going to grouse earlier about people not knowing the real meaning of "Fascism". ( )

I bought this to prepare for our trip to Florence but it is somewhat heavier than I expected and I'm not sure that I will remember much of what I have read. It is a very complete history of Florence and explains very well the different factions and leaders over the centuries. It was probably slightly lighter on the art than I was expecting but the notes at the back do flesh that out. ( )