Giovanni de' Medici (Civ6)

Giovanni de' Medici
Great Merchant of the Renaissance Era
Introduced in Civilization VI
Stats
Movement	4
Movement	4
Charges	1
Charges	1
Retire effect
Instantly builds a Bank and Market in this district. The Bank gets 2 Great Work slots, which can hold anything.
Notes
Activate on an appropriate tile to receive their effects.

Back to Great Merchants

Giovanni de' Medici is a Renaissance Era Great Merchant in Civilization VI.

Unique ability

Instantly builds a Bank and Market in this district. The Bank gets 2 Great Work slots, which can hold anything.

Strategy

This Great Merchant is a singularly powerful one for a Cultural Victory, especially if your strategy revolves around Relics, which can be cumbersome to store a lot of. For this reason, Kongo, the Khmer and cultural Poland should be looking to pick up de' Medici. The additional Great Work slots can also help any cultural civilization squeeze some extra Tourism out of their city with a Curator Pingala in it. On the other hand, if you have a threatening culture-focused opponent, it may be worth recruiting de' Medici just to deny access to him. Some extra Great Work slots (and a free Trade Route from the Market he builds) never hurt anyone.

Civilopedia entry

Even the most influential and powerful of families get their start somehow, and for the de Medici it was with Giovanni di Bicci, founder of the family’s fortune. While later de Medici would get themselves elected to the papacy, father scores of children, lead armies, marry into royal families, throw wild parties in the Vatican and such, the first Giovanni was born into a middle-class, staid, and sober family. Having few choices, Giovanni – born in 1360 AD in Florence, where job prospects were limited to commerce or religion – went to work for his banker uncle Vieri. Showing an aptitude for “squeezing blood from turnips,” Giovanni progressed fairly quickly from apprentice, to clerk, to agent, to junior partner. In 1385 he was put in charge of the Rome branch of the bank.

When old Vieri retired in 1393, Giovanni took control of the whole operation. In 1397 he transferred his headquarters back to Florence, while keeping the lending operations in Rome, where at various times (and with various bribes) it served as the Pope’s bank. Soon he also established branches in other cities in Italy and abroad, becoming rich to such an extent that during the 1415 Council of Constance the de Medici monopolized Italy’s financial transactions. In the process, Giovanni – thanks to all that clerking when younger – devised standardized accounting procedures, diversification (farming and mining ventures), usurious interest rates, and the like.

Meanwhile, Giovanni’s influence increased exponentially. From 1402 onward he was repeatedly elected prior of the Arte del Cambio (the Italian bankers’ guild). And he was made general manager of the Apostolic Camera, the papal treasury, for a period … a lucrative appointment. Giovanni di Bicci de Medici died in February 1429, and was laid to rest in a marble sarcophagus commissioned from the great Donatello.

Trivia

• Giovanni de Medici's great-great-great-great-granddaughter, Catherine de Medici, appears in game as the leader of France.