Villa La Massa

Villa La Massa is a Medici villa on the banks of the Arno, just eight kilometres from the heart of Florence. A convenient shuttle bus is provided for the use of visitors every hour. Built in 1525 as the summer residence of Santi Landini, the famous publisher of the Florentine aristocracy, the villa remained in the hands of the family till 1788, when it was sold to Cardinal Giovanni Rinuccini. The Rinuccini family lived in the villa until 1826, when Lady Catherine Hombert Ruffié Planche, a well-known French hotelier in Florence at the time, took over. In 1856 the property passed to Countess Bierliska, one of the Russian aristocrats resident in Florence at the end of the eighteenth century together with the Demidoff and Boutourline families. The next owner was John Goldsmith and, finally, it was transformed into a “hotel de charme” in 1948 by the Sears family. Villa d'Este bought Villa La Massa in 1998, reviving its original aristocratic splendour.

The villa is surrounded by nine hectares of park. Each path leads to the River Arno and offers a splendid view over the Chianti-Rufina hills. The Iris collection in the garden, planted to the design of the landscape architect Maria Chiara Pozzana, is the emblem of the “garden” which opens out as a belvedere over the river: tall irises which flower more than once, medium and dwarf varieties, yellow, white and blue, internal pathways animated by blue agapanthus and cream-coloured paeonies. Together with the herb garden and the Chef's Vegetable Garden, the Iris garden is a place of inspiration. A trail not too far from the traditional ''jardin verger potager'' which, according to the philosophy of the ornamental farm, harmonises the productive and ornamental aspects of the pleasure garden.