| | 
Profile
|
 From the moment you pass the gate, with its sentinel cypresses, the impression is one of such perfect loveliness that at last, by force of contrast, the mind goes back to strong Caprarola or tragic Este, only to turn once more to bath in the perfection of the Tuscan villa. Set on the hills of Settignano, close to Florence, yet immersed in the tranquillity of the Tuscan countryside, the Villa Gamberaia enjoys an exceptional position overlooking the city and the Arno valley. Strolling through the celebrated Italian gardens, visitors can contemplate the beauty of their design and their unique setting in the surrounding Tuscan landscape. Rich in history, the Villa Gamberaia discloses its charms little by little to those who allow themselves the time to look, think and explore. Reception rooms within the villa may be rented for conventions and exhibitions and dépendances on the property have been transformed into fully-furnished guest houses, available for short stays. |
 Villa Gamberaia is a magic realm, an historic garden with all its original charm perfectly preserved. The beauty of the landscape with views over the surrounding country and of Florence, the architecture of the villa and the garden are rightly celebrated and combine to make this one of the best known gardens in the world. A visit to the Gamberaia encompasses history, art and nature and more besides. Your thoughts and senses should be engaged to the full if you are to make your visit to the garden an intriguing and quite unique experience... We can indicate several 'manières', to borrow the term used by Louis XIV in his notes on how to explore Versailles, to visit the Gamberaia: the first deals with the history and architecture of the garden, the second considers the symbolism of the alternating use of light and shade, the third focuses on colour in the garden while the fourth explores the vistas offered by the garden and the views over the countryside and city beyond. |
 The villa appears as a regular block in the best tradition of Florentine architecture. It stands on walled foundations to create a terrace, a feature of fundamental importance to the spatial logic of properties of this kind: the vast sloping wall, borrowed from Roman building, and already characteristic of Tuscan villas such as Poggio a Caiano, enhances the monumental aspect of the architecture. The foundations house agricultural store-rooms which can be reached directly from the house or from the fields below it. They therefore provide spatial continuity between the house and garden and surrounding country, uniting them according to the traditional Tuscan and Italian conception of planning. |
 The severity of the main block is broken by six kneeling windows on the ground floor with stone surrounds and corbels enclosing lozenge reliefs below the sills. A rusticated arched door in the centre of the façade also marks the ideal central axis of the garden. This axis crosses the inner courtyard through the door at the back of the villa to meet the elongated curve of the cabinet, an 'open-air drawing-room', linking the ground level to the upper garden. The south side of the villa, overlooking the parterre, has a fine loggia with the same Tuscan columns as appear in the internal courtyard. From the first floor of the villa two balconies extend over arcades supported by rusticated piers. The external south pier encloses a spiral staircase leading from the first floor to the garden: a delightful solution offering the key to our understanding of a way of life, governed by both practical and aesthetic considerations. |
 The balconies and the loggia were added to the building by the Capponi, after 1717, when the broderie parterre and other characteristic features were also created. A large salone on the ground floor overlooks Florence and other rooms open from the inner courtyard. The architrave above the left door on the east side of the house bears the date 1610, recording the construction of the present villa. The rooms on the first floor, restored after World War II, are arranged to accord fully with the simplicity of country-life, the style being governed by restraint rather than ostentatious display. This does much to explain why the villa, although some four hundred years old, appears both modern and delightfully habitable. |
 History
Completed in the early seventeenth century by the Florentine noble Zanobi Lapi in the Tuscan style, the villa combines interesting architectural features of both an urban palazzo and suburban villa. In the eighteenth century the property belonged to the Marchesi Capponi, and by that time the house and gardens had acquired the characteristic elements seen in the famous engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi (1744): the cypress allée, bowling green, nymphaeum, grotto garden, boschi, parterre and lemon terrace.
At the end of the nineteenth century, Princess Giovanna Ghika began the transformation of the parterre de broderie into the beautiful parterre d'eau, enclosed at its southern end by a majestic cypress arcade. Elegant expressions of topiary art were created by the American-born Mathilda Ledyard Cass, Baroness von Ketteler, in the following decades. After the Second World War, the Villa became the property of Marcello Marchi and then of his heirs Luigi Zalum and family, who have continued the work of restoration and conservation. |
| |
|
