The Chianti's hill, illuminated of green and gilded tones, make a wonderful frame where Florence is set. The house architecture is in harmony with the nature, and ochre wall of the country seats blend with the elegant forms of cypresses and olive trees.

The Florentine nobles built, in the last centuries, the country seats in "strategic" areas, hidden between, the green colours of the trees; the famous coats of arms that mark them are the testimony of interesting historical vicissitude.

Between them, Villa Borromeo marks for beauty and ancientness.

Borromei Family has Florentine root and is famous above all for San Carlo ( 1564-1584), Cardinal Nephew of Pope Pius IV° and severe reformer of Ambrosian Diocese and for Cardinal Federico (1564-1631) remembered in the "Promessi Sposi".

The oldest memory about Villa Borromei go back to 1456 when, after an hurricane, the Florence Archbishop San Antonio sheltered in the country seat of Giovanni Borromei; this is told in the story of Giovanni Cambi.

The historical documentation show like the property of this country seat is tied with the Florence story.

Gino Capponi, in Story of Florence Republic", referring about conspiracy of De' Pazzi Family, tell about the injustices suffered of this family and say: "For last one, happened that Giovanni De' Pazzi, having as wife the only daughter of Giovanni Borromei, very rich man, had to have his wealth; but it was done a law that the male cousins deprived the sisters of the succession and so, Carlo Borromei, really friend of Medici Family, took the rich heritage.

This tie whit the main Italian family also consolidated with the wedding of Gilberto and Margherita, sister of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Medici who, became pope, helped his nephew Carlo Borromeo for the ecclesiastic career.

In the 1704 half of this country seat became property, as a matrimonial dowry, of the Capponi Family ( other important family in the Florence story).

Located on the Cassia way that connect Florence with Siena and Rome, sheltered many important people as Pius VII, during the trip to France when he has prisoner of Napoleon, and Antonia di Borbone, wife of Grand duke Leopoldo II,  that lived here with the sons and the court during the rising of the 1848.

Country seat, habitation, shelter during the calamity, Villa Borromeo is also testimony of an old Marian  devolution in the evocative chapel that is an exact copy of the old house in Loreto, before that a fire destroyed it.

At present it's property of  Adele and Livia Zannoni.

by eviviani@