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| © 2008 Richard Willmer | Making the most of your time in Florence |
Updated 13 January 2008 |
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The City of Florence
Florence, the capital of the Region of Tuscany, is, together with Turin, Milan, Venice, Rome and Naples, one of the main cities of Italy. For all the cultural importance of Florence, it is a relatively small city. It is situated on both banks of the River Arno, in the Valley of the Arno. It is surrounded by hills and it for this reason said sometimes by the Florentines that Florence is nella buca, that is, in the hole. Besides being the capital of Tuscany, Florence is also the capital of the Province of Florence (FI). The population of Florence numbers 366,488 (2006) people while in surrounding urban sprawl, that reaches as far as Prato, there may be as many as a million people. The name Florence, reflecting the immense cultural importance of the city, is known in different languages under different forms of the name. The original Italian Firenze becomes
All these forms derive not from Firenze, as might at fist be thought, but from the old Latin form of the name: Florentia, which evolved into Fiorenza, before becoming Firenze in modern Italian. Florence neighbouring cities are:
Incorporated into Florence itself, there are some ancient villages, which still retain some of the feel of a separate city. These are now called frazioni ( For example, Galluzzo: frazione di Firenze), the main ones being:
Besides the city centre, the oldest part of Florence and where most historic monuments are situated, and the frazioni, there are a number of districts into which the city is divided. Officially Florence is divided into 5 quartieri, called simply quartiere 1, quartiere 2 and so on. The Quartiere 1 is, of course, the most interesting one, as it includes the whole old centre of Florence. Until the XIX century the city of Florence was limited to the area contained within its walls and this area was traditionally divided into 4 quartieri (the word quartieri has the same origin as the English quarter, i.e., divided into four):
Even if this division is no longer valid, it is widely used in maps and is very important for the calcio in costume, where teams, one from each quartiere, play against each other in a mini championship around the time of the Feat of St. John. Another division, which dates from the time when the main part of Florence was on the north bank of the Arno, is to call the newer part of the city which began to develop on the South bank Oltrarno, this is, the Other Side of the Arno. This division corresponds to the Santo Spirito quartiere mentioned above. There are also a whole series place names in Florence, which will be found on any map. Some of these are districts (località or frazione and rione) others former villages and towns (sobborgo or subburbio) while other are just places. I can cite:
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