the rise and fall of the house of medici

Inside that long wall there were well over 50,000 inhabitants, less than there were in Paris, Naples, Venice and Milan, but more than in most other European cities, including London - though it was impossible to be sure of the exact number, births being recorded by the haphazard method of dropping beans into a box, a black bean for a boy, a white one for a girl.įor administrativepurposes the city was divided into four 'quartieri' and each 'quartiere' was in turn divided into four wards which were named after heraldic emblems. It was a city of squares and towers, of busy, narrow, twisting streets, of fortress - like palaces with massive stone walls and overhanging balconies, of old churches whose facades were covered with geometrical patterns in black and white and green and pink, of abbeys and convents, nunneries, hospitals and crowded tenements, all enclosed by a high brick and stone crenellated wall beyond which the countryside stretched to the green surrounding hills. Through the narrow slit of its single window, so he later recorded, he looked down upon the city. A few minutes later the captain of the guard told him to follow him up the stairs but, instead of being shown into the Council Chamber, Cosimo de' Medici was escorted up into the bell-tower and pushed into a cramped cell known as the Alberghettino - the Little Inn - the door of which was shut and locked behind him.

As he entered the palace gate an official came up to him and asked him to wait in the courtyard: he would be taken up to the Council Chamber as soon as the meeting being held there was over. His name was Cosimo de' Medici and he was said to be one of the richest men in the world.

Urn:oclc:877888549 Scandate 20110412134046 Scanner September morning in 1433, a thin man with a hooked nose and sallow skin could have been seen walking towards the steps of the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence. OL456609W Page-progression lr Page_number_confidence 98.37 Pages 394 Ppi 514 Related-external-id urn:isbn:0688053394 Urn:lcp:houseofmediciits00hibb:epub:b23ad354-c766-48b4-b95b-c188fd150153 Extramarc University of Toronto Foldoutcount 0 Identifier houseofmediciits00hibb Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1tf0nm98 Isbn 0688003397ħ9026508 Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_module_version 0.0.5 Ocr_parameters -l eng Openlibrary_edition Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 23:25:24 Boxid IA132524 Camera Canon EOS 5D Mark II City New York Curatenote shipped Donorīostonpubliclibrary Edition 1st Morrow Quill pbk.

The rise and fall of the house of medici