"The Tuscan capital does not conquer its guests with a spectacle which, like the bewitching embrace of the Venetian lagoon, or the intensity of the Neapolitan panoramas, or the picturesque Roman ruins, can be reduced to a tourist stereotype. The reserve, the sense of proportion, the intellectual rigor of its architecture, no less than the rationality of a landscape combed by the hand of man, mainly attract cultured and refined people. In the eyes of the citizen of tumultuous London or of the sooty industrial cities, Florence with its hills and its basin bisected by the Arno reveals itself as an ideal microcosm, the idea of ​​a city immersed in a arcane harmony."