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between two maps of the city of Florence: that of Ferdinando Ruggeri dating from 1731 and that of Francesco Mag-
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nelli and Cosimo Zocchi dating from 1783.4 In the former the second courtyard is missing, and the garden, between
‘Pianta della Catena’ (1471-1482) by Lorenzo Rosselli, detail.
the south facade and the houses on Via del Mandorlo (today’s Via Giuseppe Giusti), appears larger since the projectv
ing structure with superimposed loggias had not yet been built. In the latter, which represents the state of the property at the end of the century, we see the second courtyard dividing the service quarters and, on the opposite side, the garden of reduced size laid out with paths around a central flower-bed. In the first twenty years of the nineteenth century Count Guido Alberto maintained the formal geometrical plan of the garden, overlooked by the loggias of the south facade, but transformed into a park, according to the romantic taste of the time, all the open land formerly used for horticulture and as vineyards. The garden was embellished with small constructions: the Corinthian casino for the merry-go-round, a small Ionic temple and a Kaffeehaus. The design was the work of Giuseppe Cacialli and the proprietor himself who participated directly in the operations of enrichment and modernization of his residence. The layout of the new park in a romantic style is represented in the Florence city
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