ITALY 



The Villa Petraja^ Florence 



OOME THREE MILES outside Florence, 

 ^ on the slopes of Monte Morello, are the 

 royal villas of Castello and Petraja, now some- 

 what fallen on sleep, but full of memories, and 

 beautiful in their setting of ilex trees, flowers, 

 and fountains. 



The Villa of Petraja, successfully held in 1364 

 against Sir John Hawkwood by the Brunelleschi, 

 to whom it then belonged, passed later through 

 the Strozzi and Salutati families into the posses- 

 sion of the Medici, and remained the property, 

 of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany until, in 1859, 

 it, with Castello, merged into the civil list of 

 Italian Crown property. 



Petraja was the favourite home of Ferdinand 

 the Cardinal, who employed Buontalenti to lay 

 out the gardens when his father Cosimo I retired 

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