It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed as Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany.

Cosimo's architect there, as elsewhere, was Michelozzo, who remodelled the fortified villa which had something of the character of a castello.

[2] At the death of Giovanni di Bicci, Cosimo il Vecchio set about remodelling the beloved villa around its loggia-enclosed central courtyard.

Marsilio Ficino, who died at the villa in 1499, was a central member of the Platonic Academy.

The villa property was purchased from the Lorraine heirs of the Medici in 1779 by Vincenzo Orsi; the Orsi heirs sold it to an Englishman, Francis Sloane, in 1848: Sloane planted exotics in the landscape: Cedar of Lebanon and Himalayan cedars, Californian sequoias, arbutus from the eastern Mediterranean and palms, which give the grounds their feeling of an arboretum.