Podcasts · History

Florence: The city that changed the World

AEDO Media

19 episodes

Sometime between the 13th and 16th centuries, a small city on the banks of the Arno River decided—without knowing it was deciding—to change the world.

More about the show

Florence produced Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Dante, and Machiavelli. It invented the Renaissance, created the modern banking system, and exported ideas that are still present in everything you see and use today.

This series tells that story, with the depth of a documentary and the pacing of a literary narrative.

Every great story has an address. And this world began here.

Episodes

  1. Andrea del Verrocchio: The Master History Defamed

    · 10 min · S2 E8

    There's a story everyone tells about him: a master saw his student's angel, dropped his brush, and never painted again. It's a great story. It's also probably not true. Andrea del Verrocchio ran the busiest workshop…

  2. Raphael Sanzio: The Genius Florence Helped Create

    · 12 min · S2 E7

    He arrived in Florence at twenty-one, an outsider from a small city, carrying nothing but a letter asking the head of the government to be kind to him. Leonardo da Vinci was already a legend. Michelangelo had just…

  3. Botticelli: The Painter The Renaissance Forgot

    · 12 min · S2 E6

    He painted the most reproduced image in art history, and spent his final years convinced it was a sin. Sandro Botticelli went from painting the hanged bodies of traitors on a government wall to painting a goddess…

  4. Michelangelo: The Man Who Never Signed His Own Words

    · 11 min · S2 E5

    He signed only one work in his entire career, a marble Pietà finished at twenty-four. He spent forty years on a tomb that shrank from a monument with dozens of statues down to a single wall panel. He was forced onto…

  5. Donatello: The Master Michelangelo Never Met

    · 12 min · S2 E4

    Everyone has heard the name. Almost no one stops long enough to actually learn the story behind it. Donatello never had the fame Michelangelo, Leonardo and the generation that came after him would go on to enjoy, and…

  6. Lorenzo Ghiberti: The Hands No One Remembers

    · 8:47 · S2 E3

    Two men entered a competition that would decide who got to build the most important doors in Florence. One of them won, wrote down exactly how it happened, and stayed graceful about it. History remembers the other one…

  7. Dante Alighieri: The Poet Who Sent Florence to Hell

    · 12 min · S2 E2

    Florence exiled its most famous son and sentenced him to burn if he ever came back. He answered by writing florentines into Hell, by name, in the poem that would define the Italian language forever. Dante Alighieri…

  8. Giorgio Vasari: The Invisible Architect

    · 11 min · S2 E1

    For nearly five hundred years, the word historians use for the explosion of art and ambition we call the Renaissance belongs to a man who invented it, almost as an afterthought. He sat with Michelangelo and wrote down…

  9. Ponte Vecchio: The City That Continues

    · 9:43 · S1 E11

    The Ponte Vecchio has stood for nearly seven hundred years. It survived the floods that destroyed it and forced it to be rebuilt. It survived the Second World War — the only bridge in Florence left standing when the…

  10. Boboli Gardens: The City Seen From Above

    · 7:52 · S1 E10

    The Medici built it to dominate nature. Nature had other plans. In 1549, Eleonora de Toledo commissioned a garden on the hillside behind the Palazzo Pitti. The architects were given a simple brief: turn a steep,…

  11. Palazzo Pitti: The Palace That Outlived Everyone

    · 8:36 · S1 E9

    Luca Pitti wanted a palace larger than the Medici's. He got it. Then lost everything — including the palace. In 1458, one of Florence's most powerful bankers commissioned a residence on the other side of the Arno…

  12. Uffizi Gallery: The Office That Became the World

    · 9:50 · S1 E8

    In 1560, Cosimo I de' Medici wanted to solve an administrative problem. The government of Florence was scattered across the city, and he wanted it in one place. He called Giorgio Vasari. He asked for an office…

  13. The Dome: The Hole That Should Have Stayed Open

    · 7:51 · S1 E7

    Imagine arriving in Florence in the early fifteenth century and looking toward the center of the city. The cathedral is there. The walls rise. The marbles fit together with a precision that seems almost supernatural.…

  14. Piazza della Signoria: The Mirror That Forgot Nothing

    · 11 min · S1 E6

    For five centuries, the Piazza della Signoria was where Florence went when it needed to decide who it was. A republic raised its tower here to stand taller than any noble in the city. A conspiracy was punished here —…

  15. David: The Stone That Already Held Everything

    · 9:04 · S1 E5

    In 1464, a block of marble arrived in Florence that no one knew what to do with. Two sculptors tried. Both gave up. For decades, it sat in a courtyard — exposed, abandoned, already cut in ways that limited everything.…

  16. The Medici, Part III: The City Devours Its Masters

    · 8:10 · S1 E4

    The Medici had ruled Florence for sixty years. They were the family the city couldn’t imagine losing—until the moment it decided to discard them like something that no longer served a purpose. When Lorenzo the…

  17. The Medici, Part II: Lorenzo, The Flame That Burned Too Bright

    · 7:58 · S1 E3

    Lorenzo de' Medici: The Flame That Burned Too Bright. The Medici were already in power. The hard work had been done — the invisible networks, the quiet loyalties, the patience of decades. All Lorenzo had to do was not…

  18. The Medici, Part I: Cosimo, The Man the City Went to Find

    · 7:02 · S1 E2

    The Medici were not at the top of Florence. They had no noble blood, no military tradition, no name that opened doors. They had come from the Mugello valley like so many other families — and no one would have bet on…

  19. The River, the Wool, and the Money

    · 9:20 · S1 E1

    Before the Medici. Before the Dome. Before the David. There was a small city on the banks of a river that processed wool, lent money, and survived its own internal wars. A city that lost half its population in a…

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