Described by Giorgio Vasari, the villa was built on a project by Michelozzo by order of Cosimo the Elder around the mid 15th century. In the time of Lorenzo de’ Medici, it became the site of meetings of illustrious contemporary scholars and artists. Here met humanists and philosophers of the calibre of Pico della Mirandola, Cristoforo Landino and Marsilius Ficinus, and Poliziano whose verses celebrated the beautiful roses of the little "secret garden", and here composed his Rusticus. Sold by the Medici family in 1671, the complex has had numerous owners including painter William Blundell Spence. Very little remains of the garden treaded by the great thinkers of the Renaissance: the three terraces of the present layout are fruit of a relatively recent organisation, the last of which gave the lower terrace the look of an Italian garden and dates to the early decades of the 20th century. Only the little hortus conclusus, embellished by a fountain and accessed by means of an internal staircase, conserves the atmospheres and proportions of the old Laurentian garden.