Villa Medicea di Castello

One of Tuscany’s most famous gardens is just down the hill from La Petraia, at Villa di Castello. The villa was bought in 1477 by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and Giovanni de’ Medici, cousins of Lorenzo il Magnifico who were Botticelli’s patrons, and they hung the walls of this villa with his mythological paintings that are now the stars of the Uffizi.

The villa was sacked in the 1530 siege, then restored by Cosimo I, who spent summers here with his family, as well as his later years, when he increasingly left his governing duties to his son Francesco.

The Accademia della Crusca

Today is the headquarters of the Accademia della Crusca, the 'Academy of the Bran' founded by the Grand Duke Francesco I in 1583 as an antidote to the official, pedantic Accademia Fiorentina, founded in 1540.