The Renaissance: Florence Leads the Way - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 106

Everywhere are reminders of those who helped to create western civilization. Build-
ings are engraved with the twelve balls of the Medici coat of arms. Michelangelo's statues
are in the street, in museums, and especially in the Church of San Lorenzo. Dante, the cre-
ator of the vernacular Italian language, pined for his Beatrice here and later composed The
Divine Comedy . Machiavelli worked here, and when he retired from the city, reflecting
on what he had learned about power and politics, set down his ideas on rulers and ruler-
ship in The Prince. Da Vinci worked and experimented here, and Galileo gave lessons in
mathematics here. Today scholars remained astonished at how Florence led the way as the
Renaissance grew and flourished, despite being “simply” a small city of money lenders and
makers of cloth.