Hello 大家周末好！这周荷兰的温度骤降，感觉一下子进入了深冬，你所在的城市的温度是怎样的呢？

这一期我们来讲一下佛罗伦萨 - 一座著名的意大利城市，希望你能学到一些新知识！

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 29 of Weekend English Club.

Today I want to talk about Florence, a beautiful city in northern Italy. I visited Florence more than a year ago and was really impressed with this beautiful old city, and I want to introduce it to you as well.

Florence is known as Firenze in Italian and has a long and famous history. It became a very important European city around 500 years ago, when Italy was not yet one country. Florence back then was an independent city with its own government, ruled for a long time by a very powerful family, called the Medici family. They became very rich and powerful because they were some of the first bankers in Italy, and owning their own bank made them very rich. Because of this, they managed to become the most powerful family in the city and use their money to build beautiful buildings and order great works of art from some of the most famous artists of their time. The rich people of Florence became very interested in history, art and science and because of this, Florence became one of the most important cities in Europe for some time.

Probably the most famous symbol of Florence is the cathedral in the middle of the city, a large building which was completed in the year 1436. It took more than a hundred years to build it, and the largest challenge was the dome they wanted to build on top of the cathedral. A dome is a large, round type of roof and it is very hard to build, especially before modern times. The problem was solved by an architect called Filippo Brunelleschi, who managed to finish the roof of the cathedral which many people did not think was possible. The front of the cathedral is decorated with an amazing amount of art and statues and seeing it yourself is a very unique experience. The first time I saw it I really had no words because it was such a beautiful thing to see.

Florence has many buildings like this, such as the Uffizi palace which is now a very large museum filled with famous art. If you like Italian history and beautiful European buildings, Florence is really one of the best cities to visit. When you walk around the old city it feels like you go back in time and you can imagine what it must have been like 500 years ago. You can walk around the city for days and be amazed by the beauty of it, and because it is in Italy the food is of course also very good.

I would love to visit Florence again some day and I hope you can do so too. But if you go, I think it is better to visit in the winter when it is not so busy since it is one of the most visited cities in Italy. When people ask me what the most beautiful city that I have visited is, I still say Florence and if you look up some photos of it online I am sure you will see why.

• Florence：佛洛伦萨
• Introduce：介绍
• Not yet：还没有；尚未
• Banker：银行家
• For some time：一段时间
• Challenge：挑战
• Dome：穹顶，圆屋顶
• Modern：现代的
• Statues：雕像（复数）
• Go back in time：回到从前；时光倒流
• Do so：这样做

主播：Daniel

校对：nan_nan