Game and Nature |
 The Villa di Castello, near the hills bordering Florence, Tuscany, central Italy, was the country residence of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. The gardens, filled with fountains, statuary, and a grotto, became famous throughout Europe. The villa also housed some of the great art treasures of Florence, including Sandro Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpieces The Birth of Venus and Primavera. |
 Villa Gamberaia is a seventeenth-century villa near Settignano, outside Florence, Tuscany, Italy. It is it characterized now by eighteenth-century terraced garden. The setting was praised by Edith Wharton, who saw it after years of tenant occupation with its parterre planted with roses and cabbages, and by Georgina Masson, who saw it restored by Sig. |