Florence was born in 59BC as a settlement for retired Roman soldiers and, over the next millennium, a small population struggled under successive Byzantine, Goth, Lombard and Frankish rule. The population began to grow from the tenth century, and the city was ruled by an autonomous commune from 1115, though internal feuds between the Ghibellines and Guelphs scarred Florence during the 13th century. But a strong merchant base, founded on wool and supported by a strong currency, (the florin) saw the city gradually overtake rival Pisa.

Now ruled by a merchant elite rather than the commune, powerful families such as the Albizi and then the Medici came to dominate Florence. With this oligarchy interrupted by spates of republican rule – influenced by the likes of radical Dominican prior Savonarola and that byword for political expediency Machiavelli – the history of Florence never ran smooth, but the city state grew ever stronger and richer.

Here is where Florence assumes its crucial role in European and world history. Experts in both trade and banking (the Medici were to finance many of the adventures that opened up trade routes around the world), the city grew staggeringly rich. The families liked to flaunt their wealth, and money was poured into patronage of the arts, as Florence became a home to artists, sculptors, architects and musicians. As scholars rediscovered the ancient literature and culture of Greece and Rome, Europe emerged from the Dark Ages; meanwhile the likes of Michelangelo, Donatello and Brunelleschi (and a hundred more whose works adorn Florence today) were pushing the representational arts to ever-greater heights. An explosion of intellectual energy in the city saw radical thinkers (such as Machiavelli), and the dissemination of their ideas via the new medium of printing. And the Florentines’ ever-growing expertise in developing banking, accountancy, and the creation of credit saw the whole system become ever richer.