Watch Crash Course European History Season 1 Episode 2 Online

The Renaissance was a cultural revitalization that spread across Europe, and had repercussions across the globe, but one smallish city-state in Italy was in many ways the epicenter of the thing. Florence, or as Italians might say, Firenze, was the home to a seemingly inordinate amount of the art, architecture, literature, and cultural output of the Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo daVinci, Sandro Boticelli, and many others were associated with the city, and the money of patrons like the Medici family made a lot of the art possible. Today you'll learn about how the Renaissance came to be, and what impact it had on Europe and the world.