[5] Florence is located along the Tennessee River and is home to the University of North Alabama, the oldest public college in the state.

Annual tourism events include the W. C. Handy Music Festival in the summer and the Renaissance Faire in the fall.

Landmarks in Florence include the 20th-century Rosenbaum House, the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home located in Alabama.

The Florence Indian Mound, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was constructed by indigenous people between 400 BCE and 100 BCE in the Woodland period and is the largest surviving earthen mound in the state.

Pickwick Lake was created by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an agency established under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal.

It was a public works program intended to build dams and hydroelectric power and related infrastructure to generate electricity for the rural region to stimulate economic development, provide flood control, and recreational opportunities.

[citation needed] The climate in this area is characterized by hot, humid summers and generally mild to cool winters.

[10] While Florence is almost 300 miles (480 km) from the Gulf of Mexico, strong hurricanes have brought severe weather to the area.

For example, in 2005, the path of Hurricane Katrina came very close to the city, causing nearly 70 miles per hour (110 km/h) winds and some storm damage.

They first encountered white traders and settlers beginning in the late 1700s, and were forced to cede their land to the Federal government through a series of treaties in early 1800s, as part of the Indian Removal policy to extinguish tribal land claims east of the Mississippi River.

[14] The company bought the land, believing that Florence's location along Jackson's Military Road and at the end of the treacherous Muscle Shoals rapids on the Tennessee River would enable it to develop as a major commercial center.

[15][16] In 1819, Coffee commissioned Ferdinand Sannoner, a young Italian engineer, to survey and plan the town.

[13] Situating the town on the plateau overlooking the Tennessee River provided protection from flooding as well as the disease of the swampier lowlands by the riverbank.

[17] Speculators and settlers, including General Andrew Jackson and President James Monroe, bought up plots of land as they were sold by the Cypress Land Co.[14] Florence quickly became an important commercial hub on the Tennessee River, but it did not reach the level its founders had hoped.

The rock piers of the 1840 bridge survived the damage and form the foundation of the present structure.

[21] As a part of Florence's development as a commercial hub, a variety of manufacturing enterprises sprung up around the city, including an iron foundry, lumber, cotton, and wool mills, as well as a complex of cotton, flour, and corn mills along Cypress Creek known as the Globe Factory.

[22] Plantations, too, sprung up around Florence, driven by cheap fertile land and high cotton prices.

Sweetwater Mansion is notable for being the residence of Robert M. Patton, the first governor of Alabama after the Civil War and for the various paranormal sightings that have occurred there.

While slavery in northwest Alabama did not reach the magnitude that it did in the Black Belt, a significant percentage of the population (about 14% in 1818) was enslaved and by 1860, there were twenty three plantations in Lauderdale County that had over fifty slaves.

Dred Scott was brought to Florence in the 1820s and served as a hosteler in the local inn, before his participation in the landmark Supreme Court case.

By the 1850s, the school was converted into the Florence Synodical Female College, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church.

Both of these roads cross the Tennessee River on O'Neal Bridge, connecting Florence to Sheffield.

Alabama 133 connected Florence and Muscle Shoals via Wilson Dam until 2002, when the new six-lane "Patton Island Bridge" finished construction.

State Route 157, a road to Florence and the Shoals area, serves as a four-lane link to Interstate 65 in Cullman.

One solution discussed has been the Memphis to Atlanta Highway, proposed to connect the two cities via a freeway through north Alabama.

[citation needed] Another plan recently discussed is extending Interstate 565 west from its current terminus just outside Decatur, along Alabama 20/Alternate U.S. 72.

The airport is used for commercial and general aviation, It is served commercially by Contour Airlines which provides several daily flights to Charlotte Douglas International Airport, an American Airlines hub, giving the city access to hundreds of domestic and international destinations.