Little is heard of the Fiesole villa after the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent; eventually it was sold to the Marchese del Serre, who let it to that eccentric Englishwoman the Countess of Orford, about whom Sir Horace Mann tells Walpole: “she has been detained by the purchase of her own Villa, at Fiesole, which, about a year ago, had been bought over her own head.... Cavaliere Mozzi, her messenger told me that she had commissioned him to desire that I would inform you that, if her age and ill-health permitted, she would hasten to England, though she does not see in what shape she could be useful to her son.... She set out yesterday for Naples, I believe to bring away all her furniture, in order to fix in Tuscany.... She has bought the villa at Fiesole.” Later in the same year he mentions her again as riding for some hours every morning and maintaining “a vivacity not common at her age.” In Jan. 1781, Mann informs Walpole: “Lady Orford died at Pisa on the 13th.... She has left everything she was possessed of to Mozzi. The whole inheritance will be very considerable, reckoning only what she had here and at Naples.” Three years later he notes, “Lady Orford’s old Cicisbeo, Cavaliere Mozzi married.” He sold the Medicean villa to the Buoninsegni family of Siena, from whom Mr Spence bought it in 1862, and for many years it was the meeting-place of all English visitors to Florence, attracted by the genial hospitality of its versatile owner. In 1897 it passed into the possession of Col. Harry Macalmont, whose mother now lives there. But little remains of the original design of Michelozzi as Mozzi unfortunately restored and altered the building considerably, turning it into a villa of the eighteenth century. [Illustration: (Drawing looking across outdoor walkway)] FOOTNOTES: [49] Dante. _Paradise_, Canto XV. Cary’s translation. [50] Translated by R. C. Trevelyan. [51] A villa then belonging to the Pazzi family, bought afterwards by the Panciaticchi and eventually by the great singer Catalani; near the village of La Lastra some two miles outside Porta San Gallo. [52] _Storia Chronologica della Città di Firenze._ Dell’ Abbate Guiseppe Maria Mecatti. Vol. II. p. 450. Napoli, 1755. [53] Politian. _Ep._ Lib. X. Ep. 14. [54] Translated by R. C. Trevelyan. [Illustration: (Drawing looking at Villa from the drive. Villa has towers at each corner)] VILLA DELL’ AMBROGIANA The villa of the Ambrogiana, near the junction of the Pesa and the Arno, was built by the Grand Duke Ferdinando I, on the ruins of a more ancient villa belonging to the extinct family of the Ardinghelli. Going from Florence to Pisa by the railway none can fail to admire the villa—a huge cube with a tower at each corner—close to Montelupo. Near by is the small parish church of San Quirico, where, probably the preliminaries of the peace between the Republic of Florence, the Commune of Pistoja and the Counts of Capraja, were signed in 1204.