A city of central Italy on the Arno River east of Pisa. Originally an Etruscan settlement, then a Roman town, Florence was a powerful city-state under the Medici family during the Italian Renaissance, with a brilliant artistic flowering led by Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Dante Alighieri, and Raphael. Florence was the capital of newly unified Italy from 1865 to 1871, when the government was moved to Rome.