Originally belonging to the Sangallo family, as reported by Fantozzi in his Nuova guida di Firenze [New guide to Florence] (1842), and at the time richly adorned with statues and paintings by illustrious artists, the palazzo underwent significant changes in the seventeenth-century remodelling commissioned of Gherardo Silvani by its new owner Sebastiano di Tommaso Ximenes. Further modifications were made in the next century, with the addition in the entrance hall of two splendid symmetrical stairways with downward curving fasciae, and in the 19th century, thanks to the intervention of Niccolò Matas, commissioned by the Bandino brothers and Leopoldo Panciatichi to enlarge the palazzo. Dating from this last period is the present layout of the garden behind the building, with a great central flowerbed and gravelled paths, entered through a courtyard with a loggia adorned with fine sculptural works. In this garden, around the middle of the 19th century, grew the oldest Sterculia in Tuscany, planted by an English gentleman at the end of the previous century. Severely reduced in size by the construction of Via Giusti, this small parterre conserves today a sundial dating from the last century, a copy of the one placed on the roof of a shop on Ponte Vecchio.