The Renaissance: Florence Leads the Way - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 96

7. The Renaissance: Florence Leads the Way
In the distant plain lay Florence, pink and gray and brown with the rusty huge dome of
the cathedral dominating the center like a captive balloon…. I still think, as I thought in
the beginning, that this is the fairest picture on our planet, the most enchanting to look
upon, the most satisfying to the eye and the spirit.
— Mark Twain, Autobiography , 1892
[Florence…] still has the sparks of Renaissance genius…
— Peter Nichols, Italia, Italia, 1973
Every great city is known for its landmark icons. Paris has its Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Tri-
omphe, and Notre Dame. Rome has its Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Vatican, with St.
Peter's Square and Cathedral. London has its Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London,
the Houses of Parliament, and Big Ben. Florence (or Firenze, as the Italians call it) also has
its landmark icons: the Cathedral (Duomo) and its dome, the Bell Tower that adjoins the
cathedral; the covered bridge (Ponte Vecchio), and Michelangelo's statue of David. Every
great city also has what the ancient Greeks called ethos , the spirit and genius of a place, a
collective outlook and a history that explains its landmark icons.
Florence is no exception. The spirit and genius of this great city was the Renais-
sance—an outlook and an intellectual movement that created the modern age. And more
than any other place, the Renaissance was born in Florence.
Renaissance means rebirth. Rediscovery might be a better word, for the Renaissance
was a search to rediscover the morality, the ethics, the philosophy, and the learning of an-
cient Greece and Rome. The Renaissance began sometime in the 1300s and lasted until the
late 1500s. It spread from Florence northward to the rest of Italy, and from Italy it spread
to France, Germany, and Britain. People living during those years were conscious that their
time was a new epoch, a time of cultural separation from what we today call the Middle
Ages but what they, however, called the “Dark Ages.”