_In the Boboli Gardens_ 374 _The Fortifications of Michelangelo_ 399 _Porta San Giorgio_ 403 _Map of Florence facing_ 422 [1] "_The Frontispiece and the Illustrations facing pages 97, 135, 144, 178 and 288 are reproduced, by permission, from photographs by Messrs Alinari of Florence._" The Story of Florence CHAPTER I _The People and Commune of Florence_ "La bellissima e famosissima figlia di Roma, Fiorenza." --_Dante._ Before the imagination of a thirteenth century poet, one of the sweetest singers of the _dolce stil novo_, there rose a phantasy of a transfigured city, transformed into a capital of Fairyland, with his lady and himself as fairy queen and king: "Amor, eo chero mea donna in domino, l'Arno balsamo fino, le mura di Fiorenza inargentate, le rughe di cristallo lastricate, fortezze alte e merlate, mio fedel fosse ciaschedun Latino."[2] [2] "Love, I demand to have my lady in fee, Fine balm let Arno be, The walls of Florence all of silver rear'd, And crystal pavements in the public way; With castles make me fear'd, Till every Latin soul have owned my sway." --LAPO GIANNI (_Rossetti_). But is not the reality even more beautiful than the dreamland Florence of Lapo Gianni's fancy? We stand on the heights of San Miniato, either in front of the Basilica itself or lower down in the Piazzale Michelangelo. Below us, on either bank of the silvery Arno, lies outstretched Dante's "most famous and most beauteous daughter of Rome," once the Queen of Etruria and centre of the most wonderful culture that the world has known since Athens, later the first capital of United Italy, and still, though shorn of much of her former splendour and beauty, one of the loveliest cities of Christendom. Opposite to us, to the north, rises the hill upon which stands Etruscan Fiesole, from which the people of Florence originally came: "that ungrateful and malignant people," Dante once called them, "who of old came down from Fiesole." Behind us stand the fortifications which mark the death of the Republic, thrown up or at least strengthened by Michelangelo in the city's last agony, when she barred her gates and defied the united power of Pope and Emperor to take the State that had once chosen Christ for her king. "O foster-nurse of man's abandoned glory Since Athens, its great mother, sunk in splendour; Thou shadowest forth that mighty shape in story, As ocean its wrecked fanes, severe yet tender: The light-invested angel Poesy Was drawn from the dim world to welcome thee. "And thou in painting didst transcribe all taught By loftiest meditations; marble knew The sculptor's fearless soul--and as he wrought, The grace of his own power and freedom grew."