florence by mills Swimming Under the Eyes Gel Pads

Florence ( FLORR-ənss; Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse] ) is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 364,073 inhabitants in 2024, and 990,527 in its metropolitan area.

Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered by many academics to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, becoming a major artistic, cultural, commercial, political, economic and financial center. During this time, Florence rose to a position of enormous influence in Italy, Europe, and beyond. Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy. The Florentine dialect forms the base of standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.

Florence attracts millions of tourists each year, and UNESCO declared the Historic Centre of Florence a World Heritage Site in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, Forbes ranked it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world in 2010.

Florence plays an important role in Italian fashion, and is ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world by Global Language Monitor; furthermore, it is a major national economic centre, as well as a tourist and industrial hub.

A gel is a semi-solid that can have properties ranging from soft and weak to hard and tough. Gels are defined as a substantially dilute cross-linked system, which exhibits no flow when in the steady state, although the liquid phase may still diffuse through this system.

Gels are mostly liquid by mass, yet they behave like solids because of a three-dimensional cross-linked network within the liquid. It is the cross-linking within the fluid that gives a gel its structure (hardness) and contributes to the adhesive stick (tack). In this way, gels are a dispersion of molecules of a liquid within a solid medium. The word gel was coined by 19th-century Scottish chemist Thomas Graham by clipping from gelatine.

The process of forming a gel is called gelation.

Mills is the plural form of mill, but may also refer to:

Pads (also called leg guards) are a type of protective equipment used in a number of sports and serve to protect the legs from the impact of a hard ball, puck, or other object of play travelling at high speed which could otherwise cause injuries to the lower legs. These are used by batters in the sport of cricket, catchers in the sports of baseball and fastpitch softball, and by goaltenders in sports such as ice hockey, ringette, bandy, rinkball, field hockey, rink hockey and box lacrosse.

Swimming is the self-propulsion of a person through water, such as saltwater or freshwater environments, usually for recreation, sport, exercise, or survival. Swimmers achieve locomotion by coordinating limb and body movements to achieve hydrodynamic thrust that results in directional motion. Newborns can instinctively hold their breath underwater and exhibit rudimentary swimming movements as part of a survival reflex. Swimming requires endurance, skill and efficient techniques to maximize speed and minimize energy consumption.

Swimming is a popular activity and competitive sport where certain techniques are deployed to move through water. It offers numerous health benefits, such as strengthened cardiovascular health, muscle strength, and increased flexibility. It is suitable for people of all ages and fitness levels.

Swimming is consistently among the top public recreational activities, and in some countries, swimming lessons are a compulsory part of the educational curriculum. As a formalized sport, swimming is featured in various local, national, and international competitions, including every modern Summer Olympics.

Swimming involves repeated motions known as strokes to propel the body forward. While the front crawl, also known as freestyle, is widely regarded as the fastest of the four main strokes, other strokes are practiced for special purposes, such as training.

Swimming comes with certain risks, mainly because of the aquatic environment where it takes place. For instance, swimmers may find themselves incapacitated by panic and exhaustion, both potential causes of death by drowning. Other dangers may arise from exposure to infection or hostile aquatic fauna. To minimize such eventualities, most facilities employ a lifeguard to keep alert for any signs of distress.

Swimmers often wear specialized swimwear, although depending on the area's culture, some swimmers may also swim nude or wear their day attire. In addition, a variety of equipment can be used to enhance the swimming experience or performance, including but not limited to the use of swimming goggles, floatation devices, swim fins, and snorkels.

The is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. The is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers.