_Via della Scala. No. 89._
This palace was built by Bernardo Rucellai on the site of an old leper
hospital, and annexed to it were the celebrated Oricellari gardens,
meeting place of the Platonic Academy founded by Cosimo the Elder.
Vasari states that Leon Battista Alberti “designed the house and the
garden of the Rucellai in Via della Scala, the house is built with
great knowledge and is most convenient, having among other things two
loggie, one to the south, the other to the west, both are beautiful.”
But Vasari is wrong, as the gardens were bought and the house was
built in 1482, two years after the death of Alberti. In these gardens
Machiavelli read aloud his _Discourses_ on the First Decade of Livy
to the assembled academicians, and Giovanni Rucellai’s _Rosmunda_ was
acted before Leo X. on his first visit to Florence after his election
as pope. When the conspiracy against the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici
was discovered, in which Machiavelli was implicated, and which cost
two of the members their lives, the Academy was suppressed. The palace
and the gardens were confiscated by the Medici in 1527, but given back
to the Rucellai four years later by the Duke Alessandro. In 1537 Palla
Rucellai was despoiled of all his possessions for opposing the election
of Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, to the throne. Palace and
gardens then became the abode, first of Eleonora degl’Albizzi, mistress
of Cosimo I., and afterwards of Bianca Cappello, the account of whose
wonderful entertainment to the Grand Duke Francesco I., her lover, is
curious reading.[38] It then passed to the Orsini, and in 1640 became
the property of the Cardinal Giovan Carlo de’ Medici, whose wild orgies
and bacchanalian feasts made a strange contrast to the philosophical
discussions of the academicians of former days. On the death of the
Cardinal, leaving immense debts, gardens and palace were bought by
Ferdinando Ridolfi, Marquis of Montescudaro. The Strozzi inherited the
property, and sold it to Prince Orloff. It now belongs to the Marquis
Ippolito Ginori, whose wife is a descendant of the original owner,
Rucellai; but the Oricellari gardens have been barbarously cut in two,
and their glory has departed.