I Tatti
Via di Vincigliata 26
The property is not open to the public
The property of the Zati family for centuries, the villa was bought by art historian and critic Bernard Berenson and his wife Mary Pearsall-Smith in 1906, though they had actually been living there since 1900.
The villa and its gardens had suffered considerably over the years but a restoration project was undertaken as of 1909, tank also to the fame of Berenson who had begun to receive a regular stipend from the great American art dealer Joseph Duveen. Duveen and his brother ran the prestigious Duveen Brothers showroom in New York, which handled most of the Italian works now on display in America's leading museums. Under Berenson, who commissioned Cecil Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott to restructure the house and garden, I Tatti became one of the focal points of the Anglo-Saxon community in Florence and a nerve-centre of the city's cultural life.
In 1936 Berenson left the villa and his art collection to Harvard University, which established its "Center for Italian Renaissance Studies" on the premises.
