Villa Campi

Thank you very much for the information. We are very happy for Gardenvisit.com to act as a 'collective' in the sense of a place to gather information from users about garden history and visiting historic gardens.

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Important revision/addition to the earlier sent text on the Villa Campi:
I have now located the Villa Campi to Lastra di Signa (opposite Signa) on the south side of The Arno. The names of the villa has been "Villa Pucci", the family name of the original commissioner of the buildings (erected 1585-1595), the abbot Alexander Pucci. It stayed in that family until 1858 when it was sold to Guiseppe Campi and was for two generations in their possession, hence known as "Villa Campi". The name changed again with the acquisition by the famous tenor Enrico Caruso in 1906. Since then, despite various other owners in the 1900's, the name "Villa Caruso" have stuck although it is today also sometimes known as the "Villa Bellosguardo".
The gardens remain surprisingly intact. During Carusos ownership the buildings (The villa and the farmhouse opposite) were made symmetrical by an extension. The wall connecting the two houses was transformed to a loggia.
When American novelist Edith Wharton visited the grounds around 1900 she found the villa as for long not lived in and "buried in ilex-groves". She was however impressed and charmed by the garden and writes vividly of it in her still much appreciated guidebook "Italian Gardens" (1905).
The villa is since 1995 owned by the town of Lastra di Signa and is open to the public as a museum of Caruso as well as a museum of old viticulture tools in the farmhouse.
Official website: http://www.villacaruso.it

Regards
Mr Ulf Gråberg, Stockholm, Sweden
ulf.graberg@spray.se

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Villa Campi is (was?) located on a hill at Signa by the River Arno some 15 km west of Florence. It appears to have vanished since no villa of that name is found on the internet nor does it seem to be lurking among the villas of Signa under changed name. It did however sit there in the early 1900's (called Villa Campi) according to a description as well as photographs in the German book "History of Garden Design" (by Marie Luise Gothein, 1914, published by Eugen Diederichs, Jena, Germany).
The villa resembles the famous Villa Lante in the way it consists of two small and identical villas, though much less grand in appearance. Two stories high, possibly ending with a mezzanine (indicated by a third window) or just an attic. The entrance side is three windows wide, the gable just two.
The garden on the other hand is all the more interesting. Running between the two casinos is the beautiful box terrace with four circular patterns in front of each facade divaded by the gardens main axel. Below this terrace a series of simpler terraces and walls are constructed running down the slope of the hillside.
On the other (higher) side of the twin villas a huge semicircle forms an open area surrended by the 'bosco'. The houses and terraces are set within a quadrat of four roads.
(Description comprised from the photos and plan in the book mentioned above)
It's garden plan is also depicted in Shepherd and Jellicoe's classic "Italian Gardens of the Renaissance" (1925) as that of Villa Campi.

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