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The City of Florence
Florence is known all over the world as the city of art, the capital of
the Renaissance and one of the most important centers of literary and
scientific culture. Florence is the capital city of the Tuscany region;
it is located in the north-central part of Italy, between Rome and Milan.
It is crossed by the Arno river and it is surrounded north and east by
the mountain chain of the Apennines, south by the gentle Chianti hills
(the famous wine production area) and west by the Valdarno plain. The
city has about 500.000 citizens, but if you also consider the people living
in the various towns of the metropolitan area (Fiesole, Bagno a Ripoli,
Scandicci, Calenzano, Campi Bisenzio, Sesto Fiorentino), the tourists
who visit every year (about 4.000.000), the Italian students who study
at universities and at various other schools (about 40.000), the foreign
students (about 20.000), the commuters (about 30.000) and the domiciled
immigrants (about 50.000), more than one million people "live"
in the city every day. Florence has one of the world's largest historic
centers, which has such a huge number of monuments and works of art that
you have the impression you will never finish visiting and getting to
know it. It seems incredible that almost half of the Italian artistic
heritage is located in this city! ..... not to mention the works of art
in other Italian cities, like Venice and Rome, which, all together, make
up half of the world's artistic heritage!
Florence: the right place for your studies!
Florence, for many reasons, is the ideal place to learn Italian or to
improve your knowledge of the language. It is the city where the Italian
language was born and where it evolved. Therefore it is here where the
purest form of Italian is spoken with its distinctive and unique dialectal
inflection. Florence has an immense and rich artistic heritage and therefore
it has become one of the world's artistic and cultural centers. Florence
is located in the heart of the Tuscany region and in less than one hour
it is possible to reach towns like Siena, Lucca, Pisa, Arezzo, San Gimignano,
Cortona, Pienza, Volterra and the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Florence
is a rather small university and tourist city and its historic center
is free from traffic and far from the metropolitan industrial area. Therefore
it is the perfect environment to attend a course of study. It is a quiet
city with a low crime rate. Florence is not only rich in famous museums,
churches, palaces and monuments, but also in typical small restaurants
("trattorie"), where it is possible to taste delicious Tuscan
dishes, and in countless typical places where you can enjoy the evening,
meet people and amuse yourself. Florence offers plenty of live music events
and shows in any period of the year. It is also rich in gardens and parks
where you can relax. It has the world's most famous fashion designers
shops, as well as in typical artisan shops ("botteghe"), where
it is still possible to watch painters and artists at work. During traditional
events and historical re-enactments you have the impression you are transported
into Dante's or Michelangelo's time. The present and past merge in the
typical alleys of this city. For these reasons more and more tourists
and students come to stay in the city and study at an Italian language
school in Florence, thus creating an extremely intense cultural exchange.
Studying Italian at an Italian language school in Italy means having the
opportunity to live the Italian culture everyday and to practise the Italian
language constantly. Studying Italian at an Italian language school in
Florence also means having an unforgettable experience in the city where
the Italian language was born and where the most correct form of the language
is still spoken. Also for this reason every year about 40% of the students
enrolled at Italian language schools in Italy chooses to attend a course
at an Italian language school in Florence.
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