Character: Luxurious historic home with private garden, that is as much museum as cozy dwelling.
Advantages: Your opportunity to stay in the home of a renowned artist and enjoy the hospitality of his delightful granddaughter, an antiquarian and interior designer who has turned the home into a living museum.
Location: On Viale dei Mille, easily reached by car and within walking distance of the Campo di Marte railway station. Click here for a map.
Rarely will you have the chance to stay at a home like this one. Its original owner was one of the Macchiaioli, a group of Tuscan painters who many consider the precursors of Impressionism. Their richly colored canvases are highly emotional depictions of day-to-day life in the bourgeois homes and peasant dwellings of 19th-century Tuscany, and you can see them today in museums throughout the world. Or you can see what is undoubtedly among the largest private collections in the world, right here on the walls of your elegant bedroom, or above the breakfast table, or high on the walls of the large sunny sitting room where the artist himself would sit and paint. If you are one of those travelers who likes to dig beneath the surface of the places you visit, a few days in this fascinating upper-class Florentine home will leave you with exceptional insights into European life and art. And you're also sure to come away with a new friend: your charming and friendly hostess Alessandra.