Description

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For centuries Florence has been celebrated for her villa-clad hills. According to anold chronicler, the country houses were more splendid than those in the town, andstood so close-set among their olive-orchards and vineyards that the traveller"thought himself in Florence three leagues before reaching the city."Many of these houses still survive, strongly planted on their broad terraces, fromthe fifteenth-century farmhouse-villa, with its projecting eaves and square tower, to the many-windowed maison de plaisance in which the luxurious nobles of theseventeenth century spent the gambling and chocolate-drinking weeks of thevintage season. It is characteristic of Florentine thrift and conservatism that thegreater number of these later and more pretentious villas are merely additions tothe plain old buildings, while, even in the rare cases where the whole structure isnew, the baroque exuberance which became fashionable in the seventeenthcentury is tempered by a restraint and severity peculiarly Tuscan.