It is strange no records remain about either the building or the builder of Villa Salviati, one of the finest and most widely known villas round Florence. But a search among archives and chronicles has only elicited the meagre facts that in 1100 a fastness stood on the site of the present villa and was owned by the Montegonzi, who about the year 1450 sold it to Messer Alemanno Salviati. It was then described as “a strong castle with towers and battlements,” which suggests the idea that the last members of the Montegonzi may have transformed their twelfth century fastness into a fortress-villa, and the rich and powerful Salviati no doubt added to its splendour and magnificence. One is tempted to think the great architect Michelozzi must have been called in, so strong is the resemblance of Villa Salviati to his known works Cafaggiuolo and Careggi. Certainly it belongs to his epoch, 1396–1472, and the bastion-like walls, the towers and machicolations give the impression that he who commissioned the villa lived at a time when a dwelling-house in town or on the hills within sight of the city, had also to be a fortress and serve as a place of refuge during civil strife. The only positive information about the villa we have from Vasari, who tells us that in 1529 it was besieged and burnt during the siege by the Florentine mob, when all the fine sculptures by Giovan Francesco Rustici were destroyed; but like Careggi its massive walls must have withstood the fire. In more modern times a pent-roof, as at Careggi and Cafaggiuolo, was placed above its battlements in the vain endeavour to hide its war-like aspect, and layers of pink and chocolate coloured paint now give a somewhat artificial and mean appearance to what really is a magnificently proportioned and boldly conceived fortress-villa. The principal block of building rises in the form of a massive tower, crenelated and with bastioned walls sloping out on to the grass terrace, while the remainder rises round a courtyard with elegant Renaissance arches and capitals of grey Fiesole stone, and then broadens out at each corner into a tall tower whence, in days of trouble between noble and citizen, the retainers of the Salviati must have often watched for the sign of coming danger.