Curator-led visit: PRINCESSES AND PIOUS WOMEN AT VILLA LA QUIETE

Exploring Villa La Quiete

November 21, 2023 at 4 pm

Hosted by curator Raffaele Niccoli Vallesi

Admission free, in English

To reserve, please write to: associazione@palmerino.it

The Montalve's pharmacy at 'La Quiete', Paola Curradi, Gruppo Fotografico Il Cupolone

Join us for this curator-led visit of Villa La Quiete, courtesy of the Sistema Musei Ateneo. The villa was a favourite site of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici (1667-1743), the last Medici heir, and it also provided education opportunities for secular and religious women for centuries, including the laic Montalve congregation and their sisterhood’s founder Eleonora Ramirez de Montalvo (1602-1659), a poet and mystic. This venue provides a window onto the lives of educated women from the Baroque period and beyond.

Named 'La Quiete' by Grand Duchess Christine of Lorraine, who transformed it into a wonderland of 'serenity', this villa has one of the only intact Italian gardens in Tuscany. Also worthy of note is it's pharmacy, created for the live-in community under the advice of the monks of Santa Maria Novella. The Montalve hosted a live-in girls school since its establishment at the villa, and students continued to be educated there until the 1980s.

This event forms part of the Palace Women: Oltrarno and Oltre Programme.

This programme organised by Calliope Arts, the British Institute of Florence and Cultural Association Il Palmerino, is made possible with the generous support of Alice Vogler, Donna Malin, Margie MacKinnon and Wayne McArdle.