Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document havebeen preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Some illustrations were originally located in the middle of paragraphs.These have been adjusted so as not to interrupt the flow of reading.In some cases this means that the page number of the illustrationis not visible.
The Story of Florence
All rights reserved
First Edition, September 1900.
Second Edition, December 1900.
The Story of Florence
by Edmund G. Gardner
Illustrated by Nelly Erichsen
London: J. M. Dent & Co.
Aldine House, 29 and 30 Bedford Street
Covent Garden W.C. * * 1900
To
MY SISTER
MONICA MARY GARDNER
PREFACE
THE present volume is intended to supply a popularhistory of the Florentine Republic, in such aform that it can also be used as a guide-book. Ithas been my endeavour, while keeping within thenecessary limits of this series of Mediæval Towns, topoint out briefly the most salient features in the storyof Florence, to tell again the tale of those of herstreets and buildings, and indicate those of her artistictreasures, which are either most intimately connectedwith that story or most beautiful in themselves.Those who know best what an intensely fascinatingand many-sided history that of Florence has been, whohave studied most closely the work and characters ofthose strange and wonderful personalities who havelived within (and, in the case of the greatest, diedwithout) her walls, will best appreciate my difficultyin compressing even a portion of all this wealth andprofusion into the narrow bounds enjoined by the aimand scope of this book. Much has necessarily beencurtailed over which it would have been tempting tolinger, much inevitably omitted which the historiancould not have passed over, nor the compiler of aguide-book failed to mention. In what I have selectedfor treatment and what omitted, I have usuallylet myself be guided by the remembrance of my ownneeds when I first commenced to visit Florence and tostudy her arts and history.
It is needless to say that the number of books, oldand new, is very considerable indeed, to which anyone[viii]venturing in these days to write yet another book onFlorence must