Florence and the U.S. The Story of a Friendship al Giardino Bardini di Firenze

To celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, the exhibition Florence and the U.S.: The Story of a Friendship at the Giardino Bardini in Florence traces, through images from the Locchi Photo Archive, the history of a deep bond between Florence and the United States.
Sponsored by the Consulate General of the United States of America in Florence, the Fondazione CR Firenze, and the Fondazione Parchi Monumentali Bardini e Peyron, the exhibition chronicles a friendship that has its roots in centuries past, beginning with two great navigators: the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci, to whom America owes its name, and Giovanni da Verrazzano, a native of Greve in Chianti, who, thirty years later, helped define its borders by being the first to explore the bay of what would become New York. The narrative extends to Filippo Mazzei, a Tuscan intellectual close to Thomas Jefferson, whose ideas helped inspire the principles of equality and freedom underlying the American Declaration of Independence.
On the 250th anniversary of American Independence, the photographs capture some of the most significant moments of this friendship: from postwar reconstruction to the preservation of artistic heritage, from culture to solidarity.