Name: Arezzo
Nature: historical
Description: A major city in Roman Etruria (Tuscany) in the first century C. E., Arezzo remained one of the most influential and powerful communes in medieval Tuscany well into the thirteenth century. A university developed there in the early years of that century, and Aretine writers were among the first to write in the vernacular. Although Arezzo was a commune governed by a consulate since at least 1098, it continued to be dominated by its bishops into the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Guglielmino Obertini (d. 1289) and Guido Tarlati (1312-1327) were among the most powerful. The defeat of Arezzo by the Florentines at the battle of Campaldino in 1289 eliminated one of the last Ghibelline challenges to Florentine power, and by 1384 the commune had fallen under the direct sway of the city on the Arno. George Dameron