Florence (Italy)

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Florence, a city with a population of around half a million inhabitants comprises of industry and craft, commerce and culture, art and science. Travellers have always praised the pleasantness and comfort of Florentine hospitality, which today is taken care of by numerous hotels and guest houses of various categories, with more than 18,000 beds, as well as special facilities, such as camping sites, youth hostels. Restaurants in abundance and typical trattorie offer the pleasures of a gastronomy including tasty soups, roast and grilled meat, boiled meat, cheese, vegetable dishes and fresh fruit, salamis and cold meats. This cuisine is accompanied by Tuscan wines, deservedly famous, produced in the Chianti and surrounding areas; the red wine which is full-bodied and full-flavoured. Florence has retained an extraordinary wealth of art treasures, a glorious witness to its centuries of civilisation Cimabue and Giotto, forefathers of Italian painting, lived here; Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renovators of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, innovators of the Renaissance; Ghiberti and the Della Robbia; Filippo Lippi and Fra Angelico; Botticelli and Paolo Uccello and universal men like Leonardo and Michelangelo. Their work as well as that of many other generations of artists up to the present time, are collected in the many museums of the city. In Florence - the city of Dante - the Italian language was born.