Villa dell'Ombrellino, Renaissance villa in Bellosguardo district, Florence, Italy

Villa dell'Ombrellino stands at Piazza Bellosguardo 11, on the hill of Bellosguardo in Florence. Its name comes from an iron parasol shaped like a Chinese umbrella, placed on the large garden terrace facing the city. The gardens, merged with those of the former Villa della Torricella, form a romantic park with palms, bamboo, cedars and Ginkgo biloba, and include an Italian garden with box-edged beds laid out by Cecil Pinsent in 1926.

Galileo Galilei lived in this villa from 1617 to 1631 and wrote his major work 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems' there. The villa received its name later from a decorative parasol that Countess Teresa Spinelli had installed in 1815.

The villa's name comes from the iron parasol shaped like a Chinese umbrella that Countess Teresa Spinelli Albizi placed on the terrace garden facing Florence after 1815. Galileo Galilei lived here from 1617 to 1631 and wrote his "Dialogo sui massimi sistemi" during those years. The writer Violet Trefusis, daughter of Alice Keppel, kept the villa and garden until her death in 1972, counting Vita Sackville-West and François Mitterrand among her friends and correspondents.

The villa sits on Piazza Bellosguardo atop a hill overlooking the city but is only visible from the outside. Visitors should wear sturdy shoes since the path to the hilltop is steep and the area is quite hilly.

Galileo Galilei stayed at the villa between 1617 and 1631 and wrote his "Dialogo sui massimi sistemi" there, long before the iron parasol existed. The Segni family, whose historian Bernardo Segni is the best-known member, held the property for four hundred years from 1372.