Comune: | Firenze |
Via: | dei Servi, 51 |
Sito internet: | www.budinigattai.com |
In 1549 Ugolino di Iacopo Grifoni, secretary to duke Cosimo de' Medici, purchased a group of houses on the corner of Piazza Santissima Annunziata and Via de' Servi, his aim being to demolish them to make way for a palace that would give prestige to his family. The project, begun by Giuliano di Baccio d'Agnolo, pupil of Michelangelo, was continued on his death by Bartolomeo Ammannati, who probably also designed the garden. It is likely that the Italian-style garden was laid out in around 1573, when a monumental fountain with statues of Jason, Venus and sea monsters, attributed to the sculptor Giovanni Bandini, was constructed. In the 18th century the garden was enlarged and the 16th-century fountain moved and replaced by a wall fountain, on which the statue of Venus was placed. At the end of the 18th century the Grifoni family line died out and the property passed into the hands of the Riccardi family and finally to the Budini Gattai, the present owners of the property. Today's garden, which was further altered at the end of the 19th century, has curving flower beds and boasts a fine collection of camellias and azaleas that put on a beautiful show in spring. Other decorative elements in the garden include the fine iron and glass hothouse, dating back to around 1892, the banana-tree wood and the "Monument to the Lost Tree", built in 1908 as a reminder of a hundred-year-old specimen of a Laurus camphora which died that winter.