Estate Owned Family of the ‘Mona Lisa’ Hits the Market for $19.6M. (kaamsechitrakaar)
If you’ve ever wondered how noblewoman Lisa del Giocondo—famously depicted in Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa—lived, look no further than a historic 700-year-old villa outside Florence, Italy, that recently hit the market.
The estate, now on sale for $19.6 million, is located on 66 acres among the Scandicci countryside. The villa was constructed around 1300 and by 1498 was owned by the Giocondo family, not long before Leonardo painted Lisa. It eventually passed to the Antinori family, from which it derives its name as the Villa Antinori di Monte Aguglioni.
Complete with four floors, the villa is roughly 43,000 square feet, including 14 bedrooms and 15 full baths. An entrance through an iron gate leads to a cypress-lined path into the garden and service entrance. It also boasts an entrance hall, five lounges, a dining room, a library, and an at-home gym, as well as also staff quarters, an elevator, a second floor terrace, and an antique iron veranda.
Though there have been renovations over the centuries, the residence still maintains many period details, among them a polygonally planned private chapel which serves as a “clear example of seventeenth-century religious architecture,” according to the listing.
Additional buildings on the property include a caretaker’s house, an orangery, a greenhouse, and varied agricultural buildings.
“The villa is of particular artistic and historical significance and is registered with the Superintendence for Architectural and Landscape Heritage,” Diletta Giorgolo, the head of residential at Italy Sotheby’s International Realty, told Mansion Global. “The entire complex is in perfect maintenance condition and is currently used as a private residence” by a family of Florentine industrialists.