Amazon.com description: Product Description: Of all the Italian cities, Florence is one of the best loved and most visited. In this book, Florence's rich and glorious past is vividly brought to life through the medium of letters, diaries, memoirs and commentaries written by travellers from past centuries and by the Florentines themselves. The extracts chosen by Edward Chaney are as rich in variety and colour as the city itself―Boccaccio on the Black Death; Vasari on the building of Giotto's Campanile; an eyewitness account of the installation of Michelangelo's 'David'; the death of Elizabeth Barrett Browning at the Casa Guidi; D.H. Lawrence and Dylan Thomas on twentieth-century Florentine society and many more. With its contemporary illustrations, this book is indispensable for any discerning traveller who wishes not merely to see what is still there but to imagine what was once there; who wants the pleasure of recapturing the drama of the past as vividly as these great writers could hand it down to us; and who above all seeks that indefinable―the true spirit of the place.