Few cities of the world are more beautiful than Florence. Set in the Tuscan countryside on the bands of the Arno, Florence was built on the trading skills and ingenuity of its middle class. No warrior class designed this exquisite place. It reflects the taste for beauty of a new aristocracy like the Medici's who rose from shopkeepers to grandees. The wonders of the Renaissance they helped to create are everywhere. The humanist celebration of human beauty and human pleasure are manifest in some of the most extraordinary works of art ever conceived by man. Recorded on November 5, 1996.