Florence Italy Time Line.

• 1252 - Minting of the first gold florin
   
• 1299 - Palazzo Vecchio was built. The Palazzo Vecchio was the home of the ruling guilds of early Florence.
     
• 1350 – Italian Renaissance begins
   
• 1378 - Revolt of the Ciompi (wool-workers) in Florence. An example of the lower class wishing to take part in Florentine government.
   
• 1397 - Giovanni de Medici moves to Florence, and begins to take part in Florentine public life.
   
• 1401 – Filippo Brunellesci and Ghiberti win the rights to sculpt the northern doors of the Bapistry, a Florentine church. They take 28 years to complete them.
   
• 1429 - Cosimo de Medici takes over his father's bank, and within five years has political control over Florence.
   
• 1453 - Constantinople falls to the Ottoman Turks, sending many Greeks, and their influential art, to the Italian city-states.
   
• 1454 - Peace of Lodi was created mainly through the efforts of Cosimo Medici. The Peace of Lodi effectively ended warring between the city-states for the next 40 years.
   
• 1464 - Lorenzo de Medici ascends to power in Florence
   
• 1466 - Leonardo da Vinci begins his apprenticeship in Florence

• 1480 - Lorenzo de Medici completes the destruction of the Florentine republican constitution, signaling the complete triumph of despotic rule over Florence
   
• 1486 - Pico publishes his collection of 900 treatises, and is declared a heretic by the Catholic Church. Lorenzo de Medici saves him from death.
   
• 1494 - The Medici family is kicked out of Florence by Girolamo Savonarola.
  The French King Charles VIII took Florence without a single shot, and briefly occupied it before returning to France.
   
• 1513 - The Florentine, Machiavelli, wrote The Prince.
       
• May 6, 1527 - Rome is sacked by the Spanish imperial army, an event that signifies the downfall of the Renaissance.
   
• 1600 – Italian Renaissance Ends