Florence

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Place.png Florence
(City)
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Florence in the evening.jpg
Subpage(s)Florence/Mayor
Has had the same wealthiest families for 600 years

Florence (Italian: Firenze) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.[1]

Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era.[2] It is considered by many academics[3] to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages".[4] Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions.[5] From 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy[6]

Same wealthiest families for 600 years

Analysing Florentine tax records dating back to 1427, economists Guglielmo Barone and Sauro Mocetti discovered[7] that the individuals with the highest income in Florence in 2011 had the same surnames as the wealthiest individuals almost six centuries earlier.

Nine hundred of the surnames found in 1427 tax records can still be found today, and there are 52,000 Florentine taxpayers with these surnames.

The wealthiest families in Florence are the same families that sat at the top of the socioeconomic ladder almost 600 years ago. The findings show that changes in wealth and status from generation to generation in Florence were minimal, with little opportunity in Florentine society to move up the socioeconomic ladder.


 

Group

GroupStartDescription
University of Florence1859University located in Florence, Italy
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