Fiesole, Museo Bandini. I Trionfi di Jacopo del Sellaio (1442-1493): Trionfo d'Amore.

After a stroll through Fiesole's town centre, from the main piazza, Piazza Mino, this easy downhill walk from Piazza Mino will take you on a visit through some of Fiesole's most beautiful and historic villas and breathtaking scenery with views into Florence and the surrounding hills. It ends at the church of San Domenico were the local bus (no.7) can then take you back to Florence or back up to Fiesole.

Taking Via Vecchia Fiesolana, which until the 19th century was the only road that connected Florence with Fiesole, you will come first to Villa Medici, known for its sweeping views across Florence. One of the oldest (and best preserved) Renaissance residence, the villa was depicted in Domenico Ghirlandaio's fresco of the Assumption in the Tornabuoni chapel from around 1485-1490, and appears almost exactly the same still today.

Comissioned by Cosimo the Elder in the mid-1400s for his favourite son Giovanni, the villa was intended as a place to focus on intellectual life rather than the traditional farming life of a villa. When Giovanni died prematurely and with no children, it was his nephew, Lorenzo the Magnificent, who inherited the villa in 1469, when it was turned into a residence for Lorenzo's circle of artist and philosopher friends. It remained Medici property until 1671 and after changing hands several times, a century later it came under the ownership of a series of British owners, including, in 1911, the family of Lady Sybil Cutting, wife of writer Geoffrey Scott and mother of Iris Origo (1902-1988), writer and marchesa, who spent much of her childhood at the villa.

The property consists of the Villa and three east/west spreading garden terraces. The long wooded eastern entrance walk brings the visitor to the lemon garden situated on the highest terrace of the garden. The lemon garden is on axis with the Villa and adjacent to the lemon house. The house is decorated with extravagant friezes and cornices constructed with stucco and belvedere. The lemon garden consists of two large Paulownia trees, three lawn spaces, and is seasonally decorated with lemon trees in terra-cotta pots. In response to Fiesole hills steep topography, the north side of the lemon garden is a massive retaining wall with a bay hedge spanning the axis to the Villa. The third terrace, created between 1911 and 1923 by Cecil Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott is aligned longitudinally with the first, but is 11-12 m lower down. It is laid out in the Italian style, with a fine pergola positioned mid-way between the two levels. The lowest terrace of Villa Medici is accessible from the pergola walk and is enclosed on three sides with a southern view of Florence.

Gardens in Tuscany | Villa Medici in Fiesole, Firenze

After a hairpin turn, still on Via Vecchia Fiesolana at number 21, is the Villa Rondinelli. Once called “the most splendid and grand” of the Fiesolan villas, it was constructed in the 16th century. Bought by Grand Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574) to give to his “secret servant” or personal attendant, Sforza Almeni, whom he lavished gifts onto in return for his trust. Sforza added to the villa, amplifying it with terraces, a pool and grotto, constructing a magnificent garden and a grand ballroom, essentially living like royalty until 1566. Cosimo, a widower after his wife Eleonora's sudden illness, had confided in Sforza of his incredible fatuation with a girl twenty-four years his junior, Eleonora degli Albizi, who brought newfound joy to the sad duke, having just given birth to their daughter. Sforza told Cosmio's son Francesco about the secret affair, and was murdered by the enraged Cosimo himself with a decorative spear off the wall of Palazzo Vecchio for having betrayed his trust. The villa was subsequently sold to the Salviati family, one of the richest and most prominent Florentine famlies, who over the centuries were connected to the Pazzi Conspiracy, the Pope and Galileo.

In the 1960s villa Rondinelli was bought by the renowned landscape architect, Pietro Porcinai, who restored the buildings and gardens intending it to become a sort of intellectual centre to exchange ideas among artists, architects and philosophers, just like Villa Medici during Lorenzo the Magnificent's time, but the project was never completed. Porcinai did however create two greenhouse-studios and extended the gardens with maples, laurel, strawberry trees and roses, and also created a “secret garden”. It is now a private villa, owned by Porcinai's family.[1]

Built over an existing farm building owned by Fiesole Abbey, this villa was transformed into a noble residence in the 19th century. It is said that the villa was used as a stopping-off place for bishops on their way from Florence to Fiesole, hence the name, which translates literally as "bishops' rest". In 1926 the villa, which had by then fallen into a very bad state of repair, became the home of Dutch artist W.O.J. Nieuwenkamp, who carried out a radical restoration operation, and adorned the garden with many fountains and other embellishments. The five-hectare garden is divided by a 230-metre-long avenue lined with cypress trees, and is on several different levels organised as a series of terraces edged with box hedges, cypress trees and laurels, connected by stone steps that follow the contours of the slope. At the point where the avenue leading off from the villa is crossed by side paths, stand various stone elements. Firstly two female busts, followed by a fountain on several levels and then an elliptical glade ringed by cypresses and edged with circular seating; a fountain, positioned against the boundary wall, forms the backdrop to the end of the walk. Nieuwenkamp decorated the park with statues, busts and archaeological finds. These include a bronze gong at the side of the building, a statue of Buddha, next to which is the artist's own tomb, and large conches and jars made of Impruneta terracotta that adorn the wall around the tennis court. Nieuwenkamp wrote two whole books about his villa and all the changes and additions he made both inside the house and out in the garden, work that he illustrated in great detail by more than a hundred superb drawings.

Address : Via Vecchia Fiesolana 62, San Domenico

Further along at no. 65 is Villa Papiniano, a residence used by important guests such as Pope Leo X (Lorenzo the Magnificent's son), is perhaps best known as the Villa of Baccio Bandinelli (1488-1560), the Medici court sculptor and rival of Michelangelo, famous for his unpopular sculpture of Hercules and Cacus that flanks the entrance of Palazzo Vecchio next to Michelangelo's David. He restored the villa in the mid-1500s before it was passed on to his son. In the 19th century, Fiesole became a fashionable area for wealthy anglo-saxons and much like the other villas, this one was owned by a series of foreign owners who added to the villa, inserting an English style garden and trippling the original size of Bandinelli's villa. Along the walls of the villa that follows the road, you can still spot the sign that attributes Baccio Bandinelli residence, above the sculpture of a lion's head.

Villa Palmieri and Villa Schifanoiai

On the slopes just below piazza San Domenico and Villa Schifanoia is the Villa Palmieri, named after the Renaissance humanist who lived here in the 15th century and famous for being the setting of Boccaccio's The Decameron, who describes in great detail the glorious medieval garden where his story-telling group of young men and women retreat to escape the Plague. The look now is more of a Victorian style with remants of a late 17th century Baroque design, which includes an often-photographed lemon garden. It was frequented by Queen Victoria herself, who stayed here several times when visiting the Earl of Crawford who owned the villa in the 19th century. For its celebrity status, the villa and gardens have been immortalised in countless paintings and etchings over the centuries, such as the Renaissance view of Botticini's Assumption, showing Florence in the background and the villa Palmieri on the hill top on the right (pictured below, top) and pre-Raphaelite John William Waterhouse's 19th century painting of the Decameron, set in a sumptous garden of a villa (pictured below, bottom).

Gardens in Tuscany | Villa Palmieri and Villa Schifanoiai


Nestled just below the famous Fiesole hills, where the Affrico stream gently meanders through the countryside, is the historic Villa Il Palmerino. On the oldest part of the property sits the Residenza del Palmerino, whose foundation dates back to 1400. The Residenza has two secret gardens, "giardini conclusi".

Vernon Lee spent most of her life on the continent, particularly in Italy where she lived at the villa from 1989 until her death in 1935.

A commemorative plaque was installed on Il Palmerino, which reads:

VIOLET PAGET - VERNON LEE 1856-1935 LIVED IN THIS HOUSE SINCE 1889. FROM HER YOUTH SHE LOVED ITALY WITH HER PASSIONATE SEARCH FOR BEAUTY, HER MANY BOOKS REMAIN TO PROVE IT.

Address : Villa il Palmerino, via del Palmerino 12