Tuscany

Cinerary urns of the Villanovan culture

The pre-Etruscan history of the area in the middle and late Bronze parallels that of the archaic Greeks.[13] The Tuscan area was inhabited by peoples of the so-called Apennine culture in the second millennium BC (roughly 1400–1150 BC) who had trading relationships with the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations in the Aegean Sea,[13] and, at the end of the Bronze Age, by peoples of the so-called Proto-Villanovan culture (c. 1100-900 BC) part of the central European Urnfield culture system. Following this, at the beginning of the Iron Age, the Villanovan culture (c. 900–700 BC), regarded as the oldest phase of Etruscan civilization,[14][15] saw Tuscany, and the rest of Etruria, taken over by chiefdoms.[13] City-states developed in the late Villanovan (paralleling Greece and the Aegean) before "Orientalization" occurred.[16]

The Chimera of Arezzo, Etruscan bronze, 400 BC

The Etruscans (Latin: Tusci) created the first major civilization in this region, large enough to establish a transport infrastructure, to implement agriculture and mining and to produce vibrant art.[17] The Etruscans lived in the area of Etruria well into prehistory.[13] The civilization grew to fill the area between the Arno and Tiber from the tenth century BCE, reaching its peak during the seventh and sixth centuries B.C., finally succumbing to the Romans by the first century BCE.[18] Despite being seen as distinct in its manners and customs by contemporary Greeks,[19] the cultures of Greece, and later Rome, influenced the civilization to a great extent. One reason for its eventual demise[18] was this increasing absorption by surrounding cultures, including the adoption of the Etruscan upper class by the Romans.[17]

Soon after absorbing Etruria (to the north, northeast, east and a strip to the south), Rome established the cities of Lucca, Pisa, Siena, and Florence, endowed the area with new technologies and development, and ensured peace.[17] These developments included extensions of existing roads, introduction of aqueducts and sewers, and the construction of many buildings, both public and private. However, many of these structures have been destroyed by erosion due to weather.[17] The Roman civilization in the West of the Roman Republic and later Roman Empire collapsed in the fifth century, and the region fell briefly to barbarians migrating through the Empire from Eastern Europe and Central Asia of the Goths (Eastern - Ostrogoths and Western - Visigoths), then was re-conquered by the revived Eastern Roman Empire (later Byzantine Empire) under the Emperor Justinian. In the years following 572, the Lombards arrived and designated Lucca the capital of their subsequent Tuscia.[17]

Battle of Montaperti, 1260

Pilgrims travelling along the Via Francigena between Rome and France brought wealth and development during the medieval period.[17] The food and shelter required by these travellers fuelled the growth of communities around churches and taverns.[17] The conflict between the Guelphs and Ghibellines, factions supporting the Papacy or the Holy Roman Empire in central and northern Italy during the 12th and 13th centuries, split the Tuscan people.[17] The two factions gave rise to several powerful and rich medieval communes in Tuscany: Arezzo, Florence, Lucca, Pisa, and Siena.[17] Balance between these communes was ensured by the assets they held: Pisa, a port; Siena, banking; and Lucca, banking and silk.[20] But by the time of the Renaissance, Florence had become the cultural capital of Tuscany.[20]

One family that benefitted from Florence's growing wealth and power was the ruling Medici family. Its scion Lorenzo de' Medici was one of the most famous of the Medici. The legacy of his influence is visible today in the prodigious expression of art and architecture in Florence. His famous descendant Catherine de' Medici married Prince Henry (later King Henry II) of France in 1533.

The Black Death epidemic hit Tuscany starting in 1348.[21] It eventually killed 70% of the Tuscan population.[22][23] According to Melissa Snell, "Florence lost a third of its population in the first six months of the plague, and from 45% to 75% of its population in the first year."[24] In 1630, Florence and Tuscany were once again ravaged by the plague.[25]

• 
  Guido of Arezzo
• 
  A page from Fibonacci's Liber Abaci (1202)
• 
  Battle of Giglio (1241)
• 
  Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy

Primavera (1482) by Botticelli

Hanging and burning of Girolamo Savonarola in Piazza della Signoria in Florence 1498 - Painting depicting Renaissance Florence

Tuscany, especially Florence, is regarded as the birthplace of the Renaissance. Though "Tuscany" remained a linguistic, cultural and geographic conception, rather than a political reality, in the 15th century, Florence extended its dominion in Tuscany through the annexation of Arezzo in 1384, the purchase of Pisa in 1405 and the suppression of a local resistance there (1406). Livorno was bought in 1421 and became the harbour of Florence.

From the leading city of Florence, the republic was from 1434 onward dominated by the increasingly monarchical Medici family. Initially, under Cosimo, Piero the Gouty, Lorenzo and Piero the Unfortunate, the forms of the republic were retained and the Medici ruled without a title, usually without even a formal office. These rulers presided over the Florentine Renaissance. There was a return to the republic from 1494 to 1512, when first Girolamo Savonarola then Piero Soderini oversaw the state. Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici retook the city with Spanish forces in 1512, before going to Rome to become Pope Leo X. Florence was dominated by a series of papal proxies until 1527 when the citizens declared the republic again, only to have it taken from them again in 1530 after a siege by an Imperial and Spanish army. At this point Pope Clement VII and Charles V appointed Alessandro de' Medici as the first formal hereditary ruler.

The Sienese commune was not incorporated into Tuscany until 1555, and during the 15th century Siena enjoyed a cultural 'Sienese Renaissance' with its own more conservative character. Lucca remained an independent republic until 1847 when it became part of Grand Duchy of Tuscany by the will of its people. Piombino and other strategic towns constituted the tiny State of the Presidi under Spanish control.

• 
  Leonardo da Vinci
• 
  Lorenzo de' Medici
• 
  Niccolò Machiavelli, author of The Prince
• 
  Amerigo Vespucci

Map of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany

Memorial to the victims of the Sant'Anna di Stazzema massacre, in which 560 locals were murdered by Nazi Germans in 1944

In the 16th century, the Medicis, rulers of Florence, annexed the Republic of Siena, creating the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The Medici family became extinct in 1737 with the death of Gian Gastone, and Tuscany was transferred to Francis, Duke of Lorraine and husband of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, who let the country be ruled by his son. The dynasty of the Lorena ruled Tuscany until 1860, with the exception of the Napoleonic period, when most of the country was annexed to the French Empire. After the Second Italian War of Independence, a revolution evicted the last Grand Duke, and after a plebiscite Tuscany became part of the new Kingdom of Italy. From 1864 to 1870 Florence became the second capital of the kingdom.

Under Benito Mussolini, the area came under the dominance of local Fascist leaders such as Dino Perrone Compagni (from Florence), and Costanzo and Galeazzo Ciano (from Livorno). Following the fall of Mussolini and the armistice of 8 September 1943, Tuscany became part of the Nazi-controlled Italian Social Republic, and was conquered almost totally by the Anglo-American forces during summer 1944.

Following the end of the Social Republic, and the transition from the Kingdom to the modern Italian Republic, Tuscany once more flourished as a cultural centre of Italy. After the establishment of the regional government in 1970, Tuscany has always been ruled by centre-left governments.

• 
  Cosimo I de' Medici, first Grand Duke of Tuscany
• 
  Galileo Galilei
• 
  Pinocchio, created by Carlo Collodi (1883)
• 
  An Italian partisan in Florence (1944)

Michelangelo's David

Tuscany has a unique artistic legacy, and Florence is one of the world's most important water-colour centres, even so that it is often nicknamed the "art palace of Italy" (the region is also believed to have the largest concentration of Renaissance art and architecture in the world).[26] Painters such as Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence and Tuscany, as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance; Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello, and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.[27][28]

The region contains numerous museums and art galleries, many housing some of the world's most precious works of art. Such museums include the Uffizi, which keeps Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, the Palazzo Pitti, and the Bargello, to name a few. Most of the frescos, sculptures and paintings in Tuscany are held in the region's abundant churches and cathedrals, such as Florence Cathedral, Siena Cathedral, Pisa Cathedral and the Collegiata di San Gimignano.

A painting from the Sienese School by Pietro Lorenzetti

In the medieval period and in the Renaissance, there were four main Tuscan art schools which competed against each other: the Florentine School, the Sienese School, the Pisan School and the Lucchese School.

• The Florentine School refers to artists in, from or influenced by the naturalistic style developed in the 14th century, largely through the efforts of Giotto di Bondone, and in the 15th century the leading school of the world. Some of the best known artists of the Florentine School are Brunelleschi, Donatello, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Lippi, Masolino, and Masaccio.
• The Sienese School of painting flourished in Siena between the 13th and 15th centuries and for a time rivaled Florence, though it was more conservative, being inclined towards the decorative beauty and elegant grace of late Gothic art. Its most important representatives include Duccio, whose work shows Byzantine influence; his pupil Simone Martini; Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti; Domenico and Taddeo di Bartolo; and Sassetta and Matteo di Giovanni. Unlike the naturalistic Florentine art, there is a mystical streak in Sienese art, characterized by a common focus on miraculous events, distortions of time and place, and often dreamlike coloration, with less attention to proportions. In the 16th century the Mannerists Beccafumi and Il Sodoma worked there. While Baldassare Peruzzi was born and trained in Siena, his major works and style reflect his long career in Rome. The economic and political decline of Siena by the 16th century, and its eventual subjugation by Florence, largely checked the development of Sienese painting, although it also meant that many Sienese works in churches and public buildings were not discarded or destroyed by new paintings or rebuilding. Siena remains a remarkably well-preserved Italian late-Medieval town.
• The Lucchese School, also known as the School of Lucca and as the Pisan-Lucchese School, was a school of painting and sculpture that flourished in the 11th and 12th centuries in the western and southern part of the region, with an important center in Volterra. The art is mostly anonymous. Although not as elegant or delicate as the Florentine School, Lucchese works are remarkable for their monumentality.

• 
  Arezzo
• 
  Florence
• 
  Pisa
• 
  Siena

• 
  San Gimignano
• 
  Lucca
• 
  Pienza

Apart from standard Italian, the Tuscan dialect (dialetto toscano) is spoken in Tuscany. The Italian language is based historically on a "literary version" of Tuscan. It became the language of culture for all the people of Italy, thanks to the prestige of the masterpieces of Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini. It would later become the official language of all the Italian states and of the Kingdom of Italy, when it was formed. Many Tuscan terms are also common in the dialects of Umbria and some parts of Emilia Romagna, too.

Giacomo Puccini

Tuscany has a rich ancient and modern musical tradition, and has produced numerous composers and musicians, including Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni. Florence is the main musical centre of Tuscany. The city was at the heart of much of the Western musical tradition. It was there that the Florentine Camerata convened in the mid-16th century and experimented with setting tales of Greek mythology to music and staging, resulting in the first operas, fostering the further development of the operatic form, and the later developments of separate "classical" forms such as the symphony.

There are numerous musical centres in Tuscany. Arezzo is indelibly connected with the name of Guido d'Arezzo, the 11th-century monk who invented modern musical notation and the do-re-mi system of naming notes of the scale; Lucca hosted possibly the greatest Italian composer of Verismo, Giacomo Puccini together with Alfredo Catalani, while Pietro Mascagni was born in Livorno; and Siena is well known for the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, an organization that currently sponsors major musical activities such as the Siena Music Week and the Alfredo Casella International Composition Competition. Other important musical centres in Tuscany include Pisa and Grosseto.

Tuscan poet and literary figure Petrarch

Several famous writers and poets are from Tuscany, most notably Florentine author Dante Alighieri. Tuscany's literary scene particularly thrived in the 13th century and the Renaissance.

In Tuscany, especially in the Middle Ages, popular love poetry existed. A school of imitators of the Sicilians was led by Dante da Maiano, but its literary originality took another line – that of humorous and satirical poetry. The democratic form of government created a style of poetry which stood strongly against the medieval mystic and chivalrous style. Devout invocation of God or of a lady came from the cloister and the castle; in the streets of the cities everything that had gone before was treated with ridicule or biting sarcasm. Folgóre da San Gimignano laughs when in his sonnets he tells a party of Sienese youths the occupations of every month in the year, or when he teaches a party of Florentine lads the pleasures of every day in the week. Cenne della Chitarra laughs when he parodies Folgore's sonnets. The sonnets of Rustico di Filippo are half-fun and half-satire, as is the work of Cecco Angiolieri of Siena, the oldest humorist we know, a far-off precursor of François Rabelais and Michel de Montaigne.

Another type of poetry also began in Tuscany. Guittone d'Arezzo made art abandon chivalry and Provençal forms for national motives and Latin forms. He attempted political poetry, and although his work is often obscure, he prepared the way for the Bolognese school. Bologna was the city of science, and philosophical poetry appeared there. Guido Guinizelli was the poet after the new fashion of the art. In his work the ideas of chivalry are changed and enlarged. Only those whose heart is pure can be blessed with true love, regardless of class. He refuted the traditional credo of courtly love, for which love is a subtle philosophy only a few chosen knights and princesses could grasp. Love is blind to blasons but not to a good heart when it finds one: when it succeeds it is the result of the spiritual, not physical affinity between two souls. Guinizzelli's democratic view can be better understood in the light of the greater equality and freedom enjoyed by the city-states of the center-north and the rise of a middle class eager to legitimise itself in the eyes of the old nobility, still regarded with respect and admiration but in fact dispossessed of its political power. Guinizelli's Canzoni make up the bible of Dolce Stil Novo, and one in particular, "Al cor gentil" ("To a Kind Heart") is considered the manifesto of the new movement which would bloom in Florence under Cavalcanti, Dante and their followers. His poetry has some of the faults of the school of d'Arezzo. Nevertheless, he marks a great development in the history of Italian art, especially because of his close connection with Dante's lyric poetry.

In the 13th century, there were several major allegorical poems. One of these is by Brunetto Latini, who was a close friend of Dante. His Tesoretto is a short poem, in seven-syllable verses, rhyming in couplets, in which the author professes to be lost in a wilderness and to meet with a lady, who represents Nature, from whom he receives much instruction. We see here the vision, the allegory, the instruction with a moral object, three elements which we shall find again in the Divine Comedy. Francesco da Barberino, a learned lawyer who was secretary to bishops, a judge, and a notary, wrote two little allegorical poems, the Documenti d'amore and Del reggimento e dei costumi delle donne. The poems today are generally studied not as literature, but for historical context. A fourth allegorical work was the Intelligenza, which is sometimes attributed to Compagni, but is probably only a translation of French poems.[29]

In the 15th century, humanist and publisher Aldus Manutius published the Tuscan poets Petrarch and Dante Alighieri (Divine Comedy), creating the model for what became a standard for modern Italian.

An assortment of Tuscan foods: various wine and cheese, and different sorts of salamis and hams

Simplicity is central to the Tuscan cuisine. Legumes, bread, cheese, vegetables, mushrooms and fresh fruit are used. Olive oil is made up of Moraiolo, Leccino and Frantoiano olives. White truffles from San Miniato appear in October and November. Beef of the highest quality comes from the Chiana Valley, specifically a breed known as Chianina used for Florentine steak. The indigenous Cinta Senese breed of pork is also produced.[30]

Wine is a famous and common produce of Tuscany. Chianti is arguably the most well known internationally. So many British tourists come to the area where Chianti wine is produced that this specific area has been nicknamed "Chiantishire".

Between 1851 and 1860, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, an independent Italian state until 1859 when it joined the United Provinces of Central Italy, produced two postage stamp issues which are among the most prized classic stamp issues of the world, and include the most valuable Italian stamp. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was an independent Italian state from 1569 to 1859, but was occupied by France from 1808 to 1814. The Duchy comprised most of the present area of Tuscany, and its capital was Florence. In December 1859, the Grand Duchy officially ceased to exist, being joined to the duchies of Modena and Parma to form the United Provinces of Central Italy, which was annexed by the Kingdom of Sardinia a few months later in March 1860. In 1862 it became part of Italy, and joined the Italian postal system.

The unemployment rate stood at 7.3% in 2018 and was slightly lower than the national average.[32][33]

Vineyards in the Chianti region

The subsoil in Tuscany is relatively rich in mineral resources, with iron ore, copper, mercury and lignite mines, the famous soffioni (fumarole) at Larderello, and the vast marble mines in Versilia. Although its share is falling all the time, agriculture still contributes to the region's economy. In the region's inland areas cereals, potatoes, olives and grapes are grown. The swamplands, which used to be marshy, now produce vegetables, rice, tobacco, beets and sunflowers.[11]

The industrial sector is dominated by mining, given the abundance of underground resources. Also of note are textiles, chemicals/pharmaceuticals, metalworking and steel, glass and ceramics, clothing and printing/publishing sectors. Smaller areas specialising in manufacturing and craft industries are found in the hinterland: the leather and footwear area in the south-west part of the province of Florence, the hot-house plant area in Pistoia, the ceramics and textile industries in the Prato area, scooters and motorcycles in Pontedera, and the processing of timber for the manufacture of wooden furniture in the Cascina area. The heavy industries (mining, steel and mechanical engineering) are concentrated along the coastal strip (Livorno and Pisa areas), where there are also important chemical industries. Also of note are the marble (Carrara area) and paper industries (Lucca area).[11]

Tuscany is a traditionally popular destination in Italy, and the main tourist destinations by number of tourist arrivals are Florence, Pisa, Montecatini Terme, Castiglione della Pescaia and Grosseto.[8] Additionally, the Chianti region, Versilia and Val d'Orcia are also internationally renowned and particularly popular spots among travellers.

In terms of seaside tourism, which contributes to 40% of tourist arrivals in the region, Castiglione della Pescaia's sea has been repeatedly nominated as Italy's best sea by the Italian non-governmental environmentalist organisation Legambiente.[34] Castiglione gained the first place in the most recent ranking too, published in 2019. The town is also the most visited seaside destination in Tuscany, and fourth most visited overall, with circa 1.3 million tourist arrivals recorded in 2015.[34] Other popular seaside destination are Grosseto (second most popular after Castiglione), Orbetello (third most popular), Monte Argentario, Viareggio, Elba and Giglio Island. Maremma encapsulates the most visited seaside destinations in Tuscany.

The Tuscan tourist destinations of Montalcino and Castiglione della Pescaia are also home to the two most expensive streets in Italy for property prices,[35][36] with average values exceeding those of every other Italian street.

• 
  Monte Argentario
• 
  Elba
• 
  Maremma Regional Park

The Via de' Tornabuoni in Florence, the city's top fashion and shopping street, contains some of the world's most luxurious clothing and jewelry houses, such as Cartier, Ferragamo, Gucci, Versace and Bulgari

The fashion and textile industry are the pillars of the Florentine economy. In the 15th century, Florentines were working with luxury textiles such as wool and silk. Today the greatest designers in Europe utilize the textile industry in Tuscany, and especially Florence.

Italy has one of the strongest textile industries in Europe, accounting for approximately one quarter of European production. Its turnover is over 25 billion euros. It is the third largest supplier of clothing after China and Japan. The Italian fashion industry generates 60% of its turnover abroad.[37]