The original settlement dates back to the 14th century and belongs to Villa Palmieri. The name "Schifanoja" or "Schivenoglia", refers to a place where boredom can be driven away. It is thought that part of Boccaccio's Decameron was set here. In the 15th century, it became the property of the Cresci family, who transformed it into a real villa with an adjoining garden. After several changes of ownership in the eighteenth century, the garden was transformed into an Italian-style garden (Ciacchi family) and passed to Myron Charles Taylor in 1927, U.S. ambassador to the Holy Seat, who divided it into the three current terraces. It was only in 1986 that the Italian government bought it to make it one of the seats of the EUI.
The garden is characterized by three unaligned terraces, boxwood hedges, with the small grotto invaded by the Ficus repens, the staircase with two flights of steps in baroque style (but nineteenth century), the hemicycle at the bottom with hedges of holm-oak and statues called "theater of greenery", the oriental thuia and cedars of the Himalayas. Today it is the seat of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute of Fiesole.
Giardino di Villa Schifanoia
Via Giovanni Boccaccio, 121, 50133 Firenze
