The Medici were a rich family of bankers in Florence, in what is now Italy. From the 1400s into the 1700s they held great power in that city, and later they ruled the wider land around it. English remembers them less for banking than for what they did with the money: they paid for churches, libraries, and a huge amount of art. Names you meet in art class — Botticelli, Michelangelo, and others — had Medici money behind them. You say the Medici for the family, and a Medici prince or a Medici palace for one person or one building. It is a history-and-art word, not everyday talk. You meet it in museums, textbooks, and films about that Italian time of great painting and building. Though actually, they were not kings at first. They were bankers who became rulers. The money came first, and the city followed.