Faenza is a town with Roman origins and is known as the town of the ceramics. Its development is due to the handicraft production of majolica and of agriculture, which left their traces during the centuries.
The village is a splendid city of art that was already famous in the Renaissance for the production of well-crafted objects in ceramics, exported in many Countries.
The hamlet considerably rose, beginning from the second halves the century d. C., for its agricultural inspiration and the development of industrial production of objects in ceramics, of terracotta, and textile in flax. After a period of decline, it found again the prosperity beginning from the VIII century.
Around 1000, therefore, a long moment of wealth and building expansion that touched its peak in the age of the Manfredis domination. With the government of Charles Manfredi, in the second half of the XV century, in fact the city center was renewed. After a short Venetian dominion, Faenza went under domination of the State of the Church up to the 1859.
The modern facade of the city has completed therefore in this long arch of historical mutation, enriching itself during the time of structures of great beauty, with a strong Renaissance footprint.
In Faenza it is possible to pay a visit to one of the most beautiful art collection world: the one exhibited in the international Museum of the ceramics (MIC). It collects pieces, realized in this material, of every origin and of every historical period, from the amphorae of the ancient world up to the recent works of Chagall and Picasso, with a rich section devoted to the ceramic of the Renaissance. Other collections can be admired near the Pinacoteca Comunale, the Diocesan Museum, the Museum Bendandi and the Library Manfrediana.
