Beatrice Mori

I spent six years at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze cataloguing Medici letters, and I still get excited when I recognise the handwriting of Cosimo I. Now I guide full time. My tours are about the people who ran Florence, fought over it and wrote about it: the Medici, Savonarola, Machiavelli, and the wool merchants whose guild paid for half the churches. One of my walks follows the flood of November 1966, when the Arno rose more than five metres in Santa Croce. My grandmother lived through it on Via dei Neri and I use her account, along with the water marks you can still see on the walls. I learned Spanish during an Erasmus year in Salamanca. I joined the platform this summer after years of running tours through a cooperative, and I am moving my walks here one at a time. These days you can join me from anywhere: I walk Florence live with my phone and answer questions on the spot.