fellow exiles in the previous year, and made a party for himself as he tells us in the _Paradiso_. To the west and north-west of Florence are several interesting villas of the Medici. The Villa Medicea in Careggi, the most famous of all, is not always accessible. It is situated in the loveliest country, within a short walk of the tramway station of Ponte a Rifredi. Built originally by Michelozzo for Cosimo the Elder, it was almost burned down by a band of republican youths shortly before the siege. Here Cosimo died, consoling his last hours with Marsilio Ficino's Platonics; here the elder Piero lived in retirement, too shattered in health to do more than nominally succeed his father at the head of the State. On August 23rd 1466, there was an attempt made to murder Piero as he was carried into Florence from Careggi in his litter. A band of armed men, in the pay of Luca Pitti and Dietisalvi Neroni, lay in wait for the litter on the way to the Porta Faenza; but young Lorenzo, who was riding on in advance of his father's cortège, came across them first, and, without appearing to take any alarm at the meeting, secretly sent back a messenger to bid his father take another way. Under Lorenzo himself, this villa became the centre of the Neo-Platonic movement; and here on November 7th, the day supposed to be the anniversary of Plato's birth and death, the famous banquet was held at which Marsilio Ficino and the chosen spirits of the Academy discussed and expounded the _Symposium_. Here on April 8th 1492, the Magnifico died (see chap. iii.). In the same neighbourhood, a little further on in the direction of Pistoia, are the villas of Petraia and Castello (for both of which _permessi_ are given at the Pitti Palace, together with that for Poggio a Caiano), both reminiscent of the Medicean grand ducal family; in the latter Cosimo I. lived with his mother, Maria Salviati, before his accession to the throne, and here he died in 1574.