Capital of Italy for a few years, the city has been the birthplace of intellectuals and artists who made the history of art and literature from the thirteenth century to the present day. Petrarch and Boccaccio, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Cimabue, Leonardo Da Vinci, Lorenzo de ‘Medici, Niccolò Machiavelli: Florence could be told through the great men who were born there or that have made it famous with their works. Here in 1265 was born the great poet Dante Alighieri, to which the city is inextricably linked. Always goes back to the thirteenth century the construction of the Duomo, the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore, whose dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. And is an ingenious invention by Giotto the gothic bell tower built near the Duomo, in front of which there is the construction of the octagonal Baptistery of San Giovanni (coated with a masterpiece of marquetry in white marble from Carrara and green marble from Prato), embellished by Renaissance forms of the bronze door called by Michelangelo “of paradise.” Walk through the narrow streets of its old town is imagine the intense life of the traders but also the secrets and intrigues of the political and civil power, such as Piazza della Signoria, where stands the majestic figure in the copy of David of Michelangelo (the original is in the Accademia museum). For centuries, the splendid statue faces the Loggia della Signoria, a true open-air art gallery and Palazzo Vecchio, one of the most important buildings of the Middle Ages in Italy. From here is the entrance to the Uffizi Gallery, the oldest museum of the modern Europe.