THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
325 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
VILLA SALVJATJ, FLORENCE, AND VILLA GARZONI, 
COLLODI, NEAR PESCIA. 
I T is not known who built this massive and fortress-like villa, with its towers and machico- 
lations and its sloping bastion-like walls.* In 1100 it is mentioned in Florentine archives 
as belonging to the Montegonzi, who in 1450 sold it to Messer Alemanno Salviati. It 
was then described as “ a strong castle with towers and battlements,” and Vasari tells us 
that in 1529 it was besieged by the Florentine mob and burnt. That presumably ended its life 
as a fortress, and the massive tower, of which the main portion consists, has been transformed 
by a wide roof above its battlements (Fig. 339). A courtyard with Renaissance arches has risen 
inside the adjoining part, but there still remain the two tall corner towers, from which men-at- 
arms must have watched in the old days of mediieval Florence, when a dwelling-house at a 
distance from the city must also be a place of refuge. 
Jacopo Salviati had already laid out the terraced garden in 1510, and in the eighteenth 
century an owner, smitten with the taste for rococo gardening brought in by Francesco di 
• Resembiing Careggi, it may have been designed by Midiclozzn Michclozzi {1396-1472). 
337.— VILL.^ SALVIATI : SOUTII-l-AST CORNER. 
