films set in Italy
A day in gardens in and around Fiesole
14.5.12
Starting from Piazza del Carmine this morning we were a group of ladies celebrating the reappearance of the sunshine and looking forward to a day celebrating the Tuscan sun in some of the best loved gardens around Florence.
The Villa Medici
We began with the Villa Medici - first purpose build Humanist Villa designed by Michelangelo Mizzollotto on behalf of Cosimo di Medici - the big Daddy of Florence, who was making a lot money in Florins and foreign trade and salving his conscience as a usurer by investing a lot of money in religious art works.
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Poor Cosimo had a lot of doubts about his trade and used to spend a long periods trying to work out the meaning of life in St Jerome’s retreat based in the hills of Fiesole. The retreat was used recently in the film of Michael Ondaatje’s book the English Patient.
The views below of the city of Florence are beyond belief spectacular so Cosimo decided to buy the plot of land below his retreat in order to spend more of his “free” time in the perfect villa with it’s camera con vista (room with a view) over the City he already, more or less, owned.

The Villa is featured in many renaissance paintings including The Annunciation by Biagio di Antonio, shown above.
The current garden layout was developed for Anglo-Irish Expatriate mother of Iris Origo – Sybil Cutting by English Architect and garden designer Cecil Pinsent
Overall the layout is probably much as designed by Pinsent although according to Katie he would probably have strongly disapproved of the pots of red Azaleas disturbing his preferred palettes of subtle blues, creams and whites!
Le Balze
Our second stop was a short walk away from the Medici Villa to the integrated Villa and Garden project called Le Balze that Cecil Pinsent developed for American Philosopher Charles Strong (28 November 1862 – 23 January 1940) when he moved to Florence in 1906 with his daughter after his wife, Elizabeth Rockerfella died.
Also built into the hillside it is a miracle to find quite so much garden and house design developed in quite such a small strip of land!
And like all the Villa’s in Fiesole – it has a view to die for!
After Le Balze we went to the mock medieval rebuilt castle of Vincigliata for a wine and local produce tasting – and, of course, a visit to their gardens – but it was a little windy up there in the hills yesterday – fortunately our welcome from Emanuele Grezzi was as warm as ever.

Finally we visites Il Palmerino – the home of writer Violet Paget – whose nom de plume was the more masculine Vernon Lee. We had a fascinating visit round the three family homes and gardens of the family who inherited the house completed by a refreshing glass of home made wine!

Anglo American gardens around the City of Florence – from philosophers to films
4.1011
La Pietra, Le Balze, Villa Medici and Villa Maiano
La Pietra
First stop, La Pietra - a magnificent villa and estate with a lineage dating back to the middle ages. The whole estate of farm land, gardens and four villas is now owned by New York University. The Villa was named because of the milestone at it’s gate marking 1 mile from the city of Florence.
This illustrious family home was built in the 1460s for the Sassetti, a famous Florentine family. Francesco Sassetti was a manager of the Medici bank and a typical figure of Renaissance Florence who is commemorated in a chapel frescoed by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the church of Santa Trinita.
His heirs sold the villa to Piero di Niccolò Capponi in 1545 and the Capponi family remained in residence for over 300 years. The estate has evolved from a villa rustica - the estate from which the produce was produced solely to support the owner’s life in Florence City centre – into an independent house devoted to intellectual pursuits and enjoyment of beauty for it’s own sake – the life of an aesthete!
In1904 the estate was bought by Arthur Acton who presided over the change from farm to last refuge of the aesthete – not without considerable financial support from the banking family of his American wife Hortense Mitchell!
After the death of both their son, William in 1917 writer and aesthete Harold Acton was brought home from Hong Kong to manage the estate. His friends who were frequent guests at La Pietra included Nancy Mitford (the subject of a biography by Acton), Evelyn Waugh, the Earl and Countess of Rosse, and the Sitwells.
During the Acton’s stay in Florence the gardens were transformed from a rustic flat wilderness to a structured garden stuffed with statues – most of which were for sale to art collectors from America and Europe.
Several garden architects have been credited with support for this enterprise but Harold Acton describes the garden as having been essentially restored by his father.
On Harold’s death in 1994 the estate was bequeathed to New York University on the condition that financial support should be given to maintain the property and garden as it had been in the 1930′s.
Old photos are carefully studied to ensure that replacement plants are put in precisely the same place to maintain the effect and a curtain of trees are growing up to hide the untidy sprawl of modern Florence from the visitors eye!
These large green gardens include several “rooms” containing sculptures and fountains in an ideal setting for resale to visiting customers.
Villa Le Balze
Georgetown University students on a semester in Florence have the immense privilege of this view from their schoolroom windows. This is because, like La Pietra, this villa was given as a bequest to an American University. In this case in 1979, when the Marquesa Rockefeller, daughter of Philosopher Dr. Charles Augustus Strong and Elizabeth Rockefeller donated her father’s estate, Villa Le Balze, to Georgetown University as a centre for study and reflection.

Le Balze was developed by architect and garden designer Cecil Pinsent as a retreat from society for Philosopher Charles Strong ( 1860-1940) and his 9 year old daughter. He faced the same challenge that Michelozzi faced with the Villa Medici – how to move sufficient earth and create sustaining walls to sustain the villa on this narrow strip of land.
The resulting house and garden look like a Renaissance ideal – celebrating the harmony between man and nature – an ideal retreat for a philospher.
St Jerome’s retreat above the Villa -built in the 14th century – was chosen by Michael Ondaatje as the site where his “English Patient” became a sick resident until his death.
Cosimo the Elder asked his favourite architect Michelozzo to build Villa Medici at Fiesole in 1451. One of the first villas in Tuscany not build for defence but for intellectual contemplation and for pleasure – a place where banking could be forgotten and humanist life lived to the full.
Cosimo based his idea of an ornamental pleasure garden on the writings of the fifteenth century Renaissance architect and humanist, Leon Battista Alberti. The Villa is featured as a landmark in some paintings of the period – notably the Dormition of the Virgin by Domenico Ghirlandaio.
When Sybil Cutting first rented, and later bought, the in the 20th century another parterre garden was created by the “Archichokes” English architects Cecil Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott (3).

Her writer daughter Iris was brought up in the Medici Villa in Fiesole and after her marriage to Antonio Origo she also employed Cecil Pinsent to design her new gardens at La Foce in Val d’Orcia.
Villa Maiano
Our final visit of the day was to Villa Maiano where we saw the house and garden used by Merchant and Ivory in a Room with a View and the terrace where Elsa splashed out her champagne in Tea with Mussolini.































