Florence was the birthplace of Dante Alighieri, who Oscar Wilde might have described as his singular greatest influence. Dante involved himself, along with much of his home city, with the Guelph-Ghibelline conflict, a war between supporters of the Pope and of the Holy Roman Empire respectively. By 1300, the victorious Guelphs had divided into Black and White factions, supporting and opposing further Papal influence in Florence. Dante was exiled for his support of the White Guelphs in 1302 and remained an exile from his home city for the rest of his life—something that, in better circumstances, Wilde might have taken joy in comparison to his own English exile.
Picture credit: Thermos, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons.