Dante was born in 1265 into a minor noble family. Educated in Bologna and Padua, he became a civic official and diplomat, eventually joining Florence's ruling Priorate in 1300. He joined a Guelph faction which fell from favour, a change of fortune which led to his forced exile in 1302. Bitterly rejecting his native city, he travelled around Italy, eventually settling in Ravenna. There he probably wrote most of The Divine Comedy, an epic poem partly inspired by his doomed love for Beatrice, whom he first met when he was nine and she was eight. He died in 1321 and is buried in Ravenna.

Born in Pisa in 1564, the son of a musician, Galileo Galilei moved to Florence in 1574. He was educated in medicine at Pisa, and eventually took up a teaching post in the city, while there he dropped weights from the Leaning Tower to disprove Aristotle's assertion that bodies of different masses fall at different speeds. Later his development of powerful telescopes enabled him to make key discoveries in the field of astronomy. However, his heretical assertion that the earth was not the centre of the heavens led to persecution by the Inquisition. Though saved by his friendship with Pope Urban VII, he remained under house arrest in Florence, where he continued to work until his death in 1642.

Niccolò Machiavelli was born in Florence in 1469 into an impoverished noble family. 'I learnt to do without', he wrote, 'before I learnt to enjoy'. After entering politics in 1498 he became chancellor and secretary to the war council of the Florentine republic. He spent periods in France, Switzerland and Germany, sojourns which enabled him to view at first hand the machinations of powerful political figures. Following the return of the Medici in 1512 he fell from favour, retiring to write Il Principe (The Prince), a book which brilliantly united political science with the study of human nature. Later he was employed as an advisor to Giuliano de' Medici. He died in 1527.