Villa di Pratolino

Villa di Pratolino was a Mannerist villa and garden built between 1569 and 1581 for Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in Vaglia north of Florence, in part to please his mistress and later wife Bianca Cappello. The court architect Bernardo Buontalenti designed its gardens around a central axis of fountain jets running downslope, multiple grottoes with water driven automata, a water organ, and Giambologna's colossal Appennine sculpture of 1579 to 1580. The main villa itself was largely demolished in 1822, and what survives today, restored as the Paggeria and known as Villa Demidoff, is maintained by the province of Florence as a public park open from April to October. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/