Florence's Renaissance is packed into a few streets: the Duomo and Brunelleschi's dome, the Medici palace, Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi and the Ponte Vecchio. Each stop here ties one building to a dated event, from a dome competition in 1418 to Michelangelo's David arriving at the Accademia in 1873.
The walk follows the buildings in date order, from the cathedral to the Accademia, and every stop can be visited. Dates mark the event at each place, not a single journey.
The Medici ruled Florence from Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace, and plotters struck at them in the Duomo in 1478. This route follows the family from Cosimo's cell in 1435 to Vasari's private corridor of 1564.
Seven stops, all in the old centre and almost all open to visitors, show how a banking family turned into a ducal court, and how they left offices, tombs and a museum behind.
Florence, 1476: young Ezio Auditore watches his father and brothers hanged on false charges, and spends the next quarter-century hunting the men responsible across Tuscany, Romagna and Venice, all the way to the Vatican. Ubisoft's 2009 game rebuilt Renaissance Italy for climbing and running across rooftops, and mixed its invented feud between Assassins and Templars with real people — the Medici and Pazzi, Leonardo da Vinci, Caterina Sforza and the Borgia pope.
The route visits the real buildings and towns of the game. The Auditore family and their villa are fictional; most of the events around them are invented or rearranged from history.
