The terrace views and Medici history of Villa La Petraia

Located in Castello, Florence, Tuscany, central Italy, Villa La Petraia is one of the Medici villas. It features a distinctive 19th-century belvedere on the upper east terrace which sits on axis with the view of Florence.

In 1364, the palace of Petraia belonged to the Brunelleschi family until in 1422 Palla Strozzi bought it and expanded it by buying the surrounding land. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the villa became the property of the Salutati, who then sold the villa to Cosimo I de' Medici in 1544. He gave it to his son, Cardinal Ferdinando in 1568.

From 1588, there was a decade of extensive excavation works which transformed the stony nature of the place into a dramatic sequence of terraces dominated by the massive main building. While these works are traditionally attributed to Bernardo Buontalenti, the only documented certainty is the presence on site of Raphael Pagni. The villa remained in the ownership of the Medici family until their extinction, when it passed to the Grand Dukes of Habsburg-Lorraine.

Leopold II laid out the Romantic style garden park to the north, but otherwise few changes were made until the estate came into the ownership of the House of Savoy in 1860. During this time, it became one of Victor Emmanuel II's favourite residences, and the central courtyard was given a glass roof and an aviary was constructed. The villa was transferred to the Italian state in 1919 and is now a museum.

In 2014 a new permanent gallery at Petraia Villa Medici was opened to display the 14 surviving paintings of Medici villas by Giusto Utens, which were previously held by the Museo di Firenze com'era.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons