Bistecca Fiorentina at Buca Mario, hand-rolled pici pasta with wild boar ragù, and Brunelleschi's dome lit gold at dusk
Florence (Firenze) is one of a handful of cities in the world whose cooking and culture are inseparable — the city that produced the Medici simultaneously produced the ribollita, the bistecca Fiorentina (the T-bone steak cut, Chianina beef, grilled over oak, served rare: the weight is in kilograms, not grams), the lampredotto sandwich (tripe from the fourth stomach of the cow, simmered in a broth of tomato, celery, onion, and leek, stuffed into a salted roll and served from a street cart since the 16th century), and the schiacciata con l'uva (grape focaccia, made only in September during the…
Florence was a Roman town (Florentia, 59 BC) that became wealthy through the medieval wool trade and banking — the city's gold florin (minted from 1252) was the standard international currency of medieval Europe. The Medici family rose through wool trading to banking, and their patronage from approximately 1434 (Cosimo il Vecchio) to 1737 (the Palatine Electress Anna Maria Luisa, who bequeathed the entire collection to the Florentine state) produced the single greatest concentration of commissioned art in European history: Botticelli, Ghirlandaio, da Vinci, and Michelangelo all worked within…