Overview: From a small Italian community in 15th Century Florence, the Medici family would rise to become one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe. Using charm, patronage, skill, duplicity and ruthlessness, they would amass unparalleled wealth and unprecedented power. They would use this power to help ignite the most important cultural and artistic revolution in Western history – the Renaissance. DaVinci, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Galileo – all received Medici patronage. But the forces of change the Medici helped unleash would one day topple their ordered world.