59 BC Florence founded by Julius Caesar as a retirement community for
Roman army veterans.
250 Christianity arrives in Florence.
1215-1266 Struggle for rule of city between Guelphs who supported the
Pope and the Ghibellines who supported the Holy Roman Emperor. The Guelphs
ultimately prevailed.
1302 Split between Black Guelphs and White Guelphs forces Dante
Alighieri (a White Guelph, 1265-1321) into exile.
1348-1393 Black Death kills over half the population.
1406 Florence conquers Pisa.
1434 Medici rule begins with Cosimo il Vecchio ("Cosmio the Old")
1494 Medicis abandon Florence to invading troops of Charles VIII of
France. City declared a republic.
1497 Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican monk, stages a "Bonfire of the
Vanities" in PIazza della Signoria. Musical instruments, works of art, and
secular literature were burned. A year later, Savonarola himself was burned at
the stake on the same spot.
1502 Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine navigator, hired by King Ferdinand
of Spain to determine whether Columbus's discoveries offered a new route to the
Indies, realizes that Columbus had in fact happened upon a new continent.
1530 Combined forces of Pope Clement VII (a Medici) and Charlves V of
Spain (the Holy Roman Emperor) conquer the city after ten months of siege.
Nicolò Machiavelli was the last Republican chancellor.
1865-1871 Florence serves as capitol of the new country of Italy.
1944 Florence (and the rest of Tuscany) trashed by Allied bombs and
vindictive retreating Germans.
1966 Arno floods 20 feet above street level, ruining vast quantities
of art. The Medici showed their foresight; the Uffizi treasures are five stories
above ground.