Villa Medici

The field trip to Villa Medici and Florence was our last group trip for the quarter. It was an extremely foggy day, but we managed to find a bit of sunshine at the top of town. We had about an hour to get breakfast in town, then we walked down to the villa.


View over the fog from Fiesole, the town near Villa Medici





Entry gate




Incredible stone and shell mosaics



View of the villa through the foggy garden. Surprisingly, the citrus were still out. I can't imagine how much work it is to move them all into the lemonaia for the winter.


Ciottolato stonework on the ground near the entrance to the villa.


Fountain in the garden in front of the villa


Frescoed portico at the front of the villa


View from the villa terrace looking down to the next level. It was so foggy you could barely make out the far end of the lower terrace.


The central focal point of the middle terrace is this quaint fountain.


Beautiful mediterranean herb border backed with wisteria at the arbor.





The path from the wisteria arbor leads out to another garden space behind the villa.

A pair of lions stand guard at the end of the arbor path


Another simple, elegant garden


If it would have been clear, there would have been a view out to Florence from this fountain.


This was a beautiful home at the far end of the middle terrace.


Amazingly, there were still some lovely roses in bloom.


The class sketching in the fog


This lovely mermaid was hiding in a remote corner of the garden.


We found this fantastic pot graveyard in the back 40 of the property. Some of the pots looked like they had been there for 100's of years. Each pot had the Medici family crest.

After the visit to the villa, we headed to Florence for a tour of the Uffizi Gallery.