In this gorgeously jacketed anthology of classic stories, an international array of brilliant writers provide windows onto the city’s gilded past and full-blooded present. Florence’s world-famous Renaissance is represented here by its most illustrious chroniclers, beginning with Dante’s vision of an Inferno teeming with his Florentine contemporaries, Boccaccio’s bawdy tales of young Florentine nobles in The Decameron, and the artist Cellini’s swashbuckling adventures. Mary McCarthy provides a vivid depiction of a twentieth-century market town; Penelope Fitzgerald weaves a gentle comedy of manners among Florence’s fading aristocracy; and Salman Rushdie dazzles with the magical realism of The Enchantress of Florence. George Eliot, Rainer Maria Rilke, Henry James, D. H. Lawrence, Somerset Maugham, and Iris Origo are among the other brilliant writers whose stories illuminate facets of this fascinating city.