The Princes of Florence

To set up The Princes of Florence, place the main game board in the center and position the round marker on space one. Group the landscape tiles, building tiles, builder tokens, jester tokens, and freedom tiles onto their designated board spaces based on the player count. Set up the bank with Florence money tokens. Shuffle and place the prestige, bonus, and recruiting decks, leaving the recruiting deck face up. Each player takes a principality board, player board, screen, starting money of 3500 Florin, a pawn, and a prestige disc placed on the zero space of the prestige track. Finally, shuffle the profession cards, deal four to each player, have them secretly keep three and discard the rest, and hand out the starting player marker.

Players act as heads of wealthy Italian families striving to accumulate the most prestige over seven rounds. Your goal is to build up your principality with stunning landscapes, functional buildings, and theatrical jesters, while attracting talented professionals to create valuable works of art. By balancing your finances, fulfilling specific artistic requirements, and achieving secret objectives, you will prove yourself the most prestigious prince or princess.

The game spans seven rounds, each divided into two distinct phases: auctions and actions. During the auction phase, starting players initiate bidding on various stacks such as landscapes, builders, or cards, with players bidding 200 Florin or more to win a single item per round. In the action phase, players take turns performing up to two actions. Available actions include building structures, acquiring bonus or profession cards, introducing freedom tiles, or completing a work of art using a profession card and meeting specific prerequisite items on your board.

Completing works of art generates work value based on matching landscapes, buildings, freedoms, jesters, and cards. This value converts into money, which can be partially traded for immediate prestige points. At the end of each round, players who completed works compare their work values, and the highest scorer earns bonus prestige. Duplicate landscape tiles and certain builder milestones also grant immediate prestige throughout the game.

The game automatically ends after the completion of the seventh round. Players then reveal and score their secret prestige cards, gaining points for meeting specific conditions such as collecting the most jesters or having diverse landscape types. The player with the highest accumulated prestige wins the game. In the event of a tie, the tied player with the most remaining money is declared the winner.