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  Auspices

Comune of Florence

All conference sessions and workshop will be located at

Visualizzazione ingrandita della mappa

History of Villa La Pietra

This villa, screened by an imposing iron gate framed by statues and large vases, stands at the end of a long avenue lined with cypress trees. Having been bought and partly transformed by banker Francesco Sassetti in 1460, the property passed into the hands of the Capponi family in 1546. Cardinal Luigi Capponi drew on the talents of Carlo Fontana to transform the villa into its present state. During the period in which Florence was the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, the villa housed the Prussian Embassy. In the early 20th century the property was purchased by Arthur and Hortence Acton, who in 1904 set about reorganising the garden, with the help of their Polish gardener. The only part left unchanged was the area corresponding to the ancient walled Lemon Garden, on the left-hand side of the front of the building. The Actons' aim was to recreate a classical Italian-style garden layout, on three stepped terraces. This apparently straightforward arrangement is in fact a highly elaborate one, in which views occasionally open up onto the surrounding countryside and with architectural and decorative elements embellishing the stanze di verzura, the areas of greenery on the terraces. Many of the statues bought by Arthur Acton to decorate the garden, by Orazio Marinali and the Bonazza sculptors, came from the villas along the Brenta river in the Veneto area. The villa was inherited by Arthur Acton's son Harold, upon whose death the villa was bequeathed to New York University, in accordance with Harold Acton's last wishes.

The La Pietra Garden is one of the most celebrated in Italy. A Renaissance revival garden, it reflects the tastes of the large Anglo-American community that lived in Florence at the turn of the nineteenth century. Laid out by the Actons between 1908 and the early 1930s, it drew its inspiration from the sixteenth century gardens of Florence. One of its special features is its numerous sculptures (there are over 180 of them), ranging in date from Roman times through the 17th Century and including 19th Century copies. As Harold Acton points out in his Memoirs of an Aesthete (1948) the garden of an Italian villa constitutes the natural extension of the house: at Villa La Pietra the sequence of rooms in the house and garden is developed on two perpendicular axes and provides unexpected views in all directions, both indoors and out. Such vistas, many formal in composition, others occurring almost as happy accidents are often made up of combinations of objects, of varying age, made of contrasting materials, colors, forms and styles which perfectly illustrate the eclectic taste prevalent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.