Villa di Castello

The Villa di Castello is a country residence in the hills near Sesto Fiorentino, on the outskirts of Florence in Tuscany, Italy. A fortified building had stood on the site since at least 1427, and the property was bought in 1477 by Lorenzo and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de' Medici before becoming the country residence of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, in the 1530s and 1540s. Cosimo commissioned the engineer Piero da San Casciano to build a system of aqueducts, the sculptor Niccolo Tribolo to design fountains, statues, and a garden, and the architect Giorgio Vasari to restore and enlarge the villa itself. The house is now the property of the Accademia della Crusca, and its celebrated Renaissance garden, with its fountains and grottoes, became a national museum in 1984. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/