Villas in Florence: Villa dell`Ombrellino
Situated on the Bellosguardo hill, offering a magnificent view of Florence, Villa dell`Ombrellino was built in 1372 and belonged to the Segni family for more than four centuries.
Countess Teresa Spinelli bought it in 1815. During the renovation works, a sort of metal Chinese-umbrella-shaped gazebo was put in the garden. Since then, the villa, which at the time was known as "Villa di Bellosguardo", changed its name and became "Villa dell`Ombrellino.
In 1878 the Zoubow family, who had acquired the villa four years earlier, united Villa dell`Ombrellino and the nearby Villa della Torretta and reorganized the garden, where some exotic plants were bedded.
The English Alice Keppel acquired the villa at the beginning of the 20th century. After having demolished the "Torricella" in order to enjoy a wider panorama of Florence, in 1926 the new owner commissioned the English architect Cecil Pinsel (who worked also in Villa I Tatti and Villa Le Balze, in Fiesole) to transform a part of the park into an Italian garden. When Alice Keppel died in 1947, her daughter Violet Trefusis inherited the villa, where she lived until her death.
In the course of the centuries many celebrities stayed in Villa dell`Ombrellino: Galileo Galilei lived there from 1617 to 1631; Ugo Foscolo, the French impressionist painter Marcel Desboutin and expert in Italian art Charles Eliot Norton stayed there in more recent times.
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