The city of Florence
First sentence
Florence, wrote the chronicler Dino Campagni early in the fourteenth century, is a noble city with a temperate climate; and though poor in subject territory, it is blessed with a "broad and majestic river, of sweet water, that divides the city almost in the middle."...
Description
In this deeply personal and learned labor of love, R.W.B. Lewis, acclaimed chronicler of such great American cosmopolitans as Edith Wharton and Henry James, provides a new look at the glories of Florence, the smallish Tuscan city which has been a prime source for modern Western culture and which has also been his second home for the past fifty years. In chapters dense with historical detail and personal reflection, Lewis reconsiders the principal focal points of this much-beloved city - the Arno, the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, Santa Croce - and casts new light on Florence's cultural patrimony and civic legacy from the Middle Ages to the present. With a scholar's eye and a lover's passion, he invites us to share his vision of a city and the way of life it has engendered and inspired.