Villa La Petraia

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The Villa La Petraia in Florence

The Medici Villa La Petraia is located in Florence , Via della Petraia 40, in the Castello district, Tuscany region , Italy.

history

Painting by Giusto Utens - Villa Medici La Petraia

The construction goes back to an old castle of the Brunelleschi family, which fell to the Strozzi family , who were expropriated by Alessandro de 'Medici in 1532 . Cosimo I gave the villa to his son Ferdinando I, who commissioned Bernardo Buontalenti with the renovation, which was carried out between 1576 and 1591. After the Medici died out in 1737, the villa came into the possession of the House of Habsburg-Lothringen and, with the unification of Italy, to the House of Savoy . Today the villa is a museum and is one of the most famous of the Medici villas .

The Villa

Buontalenti created a rectangular, two-storey building that includes the old defense tower. As a belvedere, it towers over the villa. The building encloses a square inner courtyard, which was protected with a glass roof under King Victor Emmanuel II . The two side wings have two-story loggias. The walls were frescoed by Volterrano between 1636 and 1648. These are history pictures that depict important stages in the life of the Medici.

The garden

Panoramic view of the garden
The Villa Medici La Petraia

The garden was laid out by Niccolò Tribolo as a hillside garden with three terraces in the style of a Giardino all'italiana. The original appearance is shown in the painting Giusto Utens, which was created around 1600. The terrace in front of the villa still roughly corresponds to this design. The fountain, also created by Tribolo, originally stood in the nearby Villa of Castello. The fountain figure, the Venus Fiorenza by Giovanni da Bologna , has been removed and is on display in the villa.

During the time of the Lorraine ownership, an English landscape park was laid out on the north side, behind the villa, according to a design by the Bohemian gardener Joseph Frietsch .

literature

  • Harold Acton : Villas in Tuscany. Benteli, Bern 1984, ISBN 3-7165-0468-8 .
  • Gerda Bödefeld, Berthold Hinz : The villas of Tuscany and their gardens. Art and cultural history travels through the landscapes around Florence and Pistoia, Lucca and Siena. DuMont, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-7701-2275-5 ( DuMont documents. DuMont art travel guide ).
  • Carlo Cresti: Villas in Tuscany. Recordings by Massimo Listri. Hirmer, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-7774-5920-8 .
  • Torsten Olaf Enge, Carl Friedrich Schröer: Garden art in Europe. 1450-1800. From the villa garden of the Italian Renaissance to the English landscape garden. Taschen, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-8228-0402-9 .
  • Penelope Hobhouse : Gardens in Italy. A travel guide to the most beautiful gardens. Birkhäuser, Basel et al. 1999, ISBN 3-7643-6006-2 .
  • Massimo Listri, Cesare M. Cunaccia: Italian Gardens. Fascinating garden art from 5 centuries. Bassermann, Niedernhausen 2001, ISBN 3-8094-0998-7 .
  • Gianni C. Sciolla: The Medici Villas in Tuscany. Atlantis-Verlag, Herrsching 1989, ISBN 3-88199-614-1 .
  • Margherita Azzi Visentini: The Italian Villa. Buildings from the 15th and 16th centuries. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-421-03125-8 .

Web links

Commons : Villa La Petraia  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 43 ° 49 ′ 5.8 ″  N , 11 ° 14 ′ 4.3 ″  E