VILLA DELLA PETRAJA, FLORENCE 
PLATES 38, 39 
BOUT three miles from Florence, to the eastward, lie a cluster of villas with 
gardens still remaining of considerable interest. Two of these, the Villas 
Petraja and Castello, are the property of the Crown of Italy, the other 
belongs to Prince Corsini. All three have their ‘ podere ’ or farm, extending 
up to the garden wall, in true Tuscan fashion. The Villa della Petraja was 
originally owned by the Medici family, and stands boldly against the 
hillside with a fine background of cypresses, connected with the Villa di 
Castello by a shady ilex wood; its old-world look-out towers silhouetted against a deep blue 
sky, and reflected in a pool where huge and ancient carp love to disport themselves. From the 
terrace of Petraja Ariosto is said to have written his well-known lines: 
To see the hills with villas sprinkled o’er 
Would make one think that, even as flowers and trees, 
Here earth tall towers in rich abundance bore. 
If gathered were thy scattered palaces 
Within a single wall, beneath one name, 
Two Romes would scarce appear so great as these .’ 1 
The villa lies within sight of the city, peaceful—almost a garden of roses and carnations—its 
terraces sinking gradually down to the plain, with an enormous marble reservoir of clear green 
water. Upon the upper terrace are a few large ilexes; round the trunk of one of these a 
stairway twines, leading up to a platform amongst the branches, where Victor Emmanuel loved 
to dine. On the east side of the villa is the beautiful fountain illustrated on Plate 38. It was 
removed from Castello and brought here by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo. It is one of 
II Tribolo’s masterpieces, and Vasari says: ‘He carved on the marble base a mass of marine 
monsters, with tails so curiously twisted together that nothing better can be done in that style; 
having finished it, he took a marble basin, brought to Castello long before, and in the throat, 
near to the edge of the said basin, he made a circle of dancing boys holding certain festoons 
of marine creatures, carved with excellent imagination out of the marble; also the stem to go 
above the said basin he carved with much grace, with boys and masks for spouting out water, 
Translated by R. C. Trevelyan. 
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