Villa La Pietra
Via Bolognese 120
Guided tours every Friday, by appointment only. Open for visits with free guided tours 16−20 April 2012.
For information and reservations: villa.lapietra@nyu.edu
tel. +39 0555007210
Formerly a property of the Sassetti and later the Capponi families, the villa was purchased by Hortense Mitchell of Chicago in the early 20th century. With her husband Arthur Acton, a collector and antiquarian from London who had worked with architect Stanford White, Hortense began work on redesigning the garden with the intention of turning it into a classic giardino all'italiana on three terraces.
The family's splendid collection of paintings, statues, tapestries, frescoes, archaeological finds, ceramics and a variety of objets d'art put together on the basis of mainly aesthetic criteria, was housed in the villa.
The estate was inherited on his parents' death by their son Harold, a writer, eminent Sinophile and one of the last exponents of the Anglo-Florentine community that made such a lively contribution to the city's private parlours and historic cafés for over a century.
Sir Harold bequeath the villa, its garden and his art collection to New York University, which has been running its study abroad program here since 1994. The decision to leave the estate to New York University was doubtless due in no small measure to the influence of his American mother and of his friendship both with Bernard Berenson-his childhood mentor-and with Craig Smith and Frederick Hartt, two art historians with the New York Institute of Fine Arts.
