ABSTRACT

First Published in 1968, People of Florence raises the question what makes a city? This is neither a guidebook nor a typical sociological treatise, but the portrait of a people. Trinkets of history are lightly painted in to give background to what the author calls ‘locality’: Florence of today as formed by her past and by the physical conditions of Tuscany. Two principal chapters are intimately concerned with the flood of 1966. The author also takes us through the relation between the individual liberties in Florence and the bureaucratic controls of the Government in Rome, along with the architecture, art, music, theatre, song birds, flowers, trees, food and drink, public ceremonies, games, ancient rites, and human stories. This book will be an interesting read for scholars and researchers of sociology, urban history, social anthropology, cultural studies and for general readers interested to know about Florence.

chapter 1|5 pages

Illustrious but Dead

chapter 2|7 pages

‘O Sole Splendido!’

chapter 3|11 pages

View from a Hill

chapter 4|4 pages

The Fireflies

chapter 5|8 pages

Abundance

chapter 6|4 pages

How to Drive a Car in This Country

chapter 7|13 pages

Spirit and Locality

chapter 8|2 pages

Florentines on Florentines

chapter 9|5 pages

To Touch a Donatello

chapter 10|4 pages

L' Impruneta 1

chapter 11|8 pages

Going to School

chapter 12|4 pages

Concerning Forest Fires

chapter 13|15 pages

Tale of a Tuscan Garden

chapter 14|11 pages

Florentine Food and Drink

chapter 15|1 pages

An Egg and A Leg

chapter 16|6 pages

Spring

chapter 17|5 pages

A Chapter on Games

chapter 18|3 pages

The Alpini Invasion

chapter 19|9 pages

The Small Streets

chapter 20|2 pages

Houses Under the Soil

chapter 21|7 pages

High Summer

chapter 22|1 pages

Panache of a Beggar

chapter 24|2 pages

The Car of Thespis

chapter 25|6 pages

Eyewitness of the Pact of Twinship

chapter 26|4 pages

British Week

chapter 27|10 pages

Rome

chapter 28|2 pages

A Sackful of Sand

chapter 29|15 pages

The Coming of the Mud

chapter 30|14 pages

City to City

chapter 31|2 pages

The New Generation