Florence is simply a great city and a must for any vistor to Italy. Unlike many other places in this country, the city doesn´t offer any sights from Antiquity (ancient Rome), but this is more than made up by the numerous monuments (palaces, churches, parks, bridges, the Cathedral) from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, the time of Florence´s greatest cultural flowering. The whole city is a work of art - the cradle of the Renaissance -, and names like the Medici, Boccaccio, Petrarca, Dante, Galileo, Giotto, Botticelli, and Machiavelli are famous everywhere (have I already mentioned da Vinci and Michelangelo?), and Florence is one of the cultural hotspots (not only of Europe but of the world) that everybody should have seen.