Discover the Stories Behind Palazzo della Gherardesca’s Exceptional Women on International Women's Day 2024 at Four Seasons Hotel Firenze

On March 8, 2024, Four Seasons Hotel Firenze celebrates International Women's Day honouring the exceptional women who lived in Palazzo della Gherardesca with a public tour of the property highlighting their stories.

Sara Innocenti, Florentine tour guide and travel content creator, will guide curious guests and external visitors through a historical visit of the Renaissance palace and its garden, recalling the lives of humanist Alessandra Scala and countess Costanza de’ Medici della Gherardesca.

Renaissance women tour, March 8, 2024 at 11:00 am – for bookings: caterina.tritto@fourseasons.com.  

Alessandra Scala

Born in 1475, Bartolomeo Scala’s daughter Alessandra was one of the many gifted women of the Renaissance who has only recently been rediscovered. A student of humanist man of letters Poliziano – one of the most important poets and humanists of that time – she was equally adept in Latin and Greek. Aged sixteen, she wrote to an older friend, Venetian proto-feminist Cassandra Fedele, asking for help with a very modern dilemma: should she marry, or pursue the life of an artist and poet? Cassandra’s reply was wonderfully sensitive: quoting Plato, she advised the talented teenager to listen to her heart. Three years later, Alessandra proved that a young woman in the 1490s could have it all, by getting married to a fellow linguist and poet, Michele Marullo.

Costanza de’ Medici della Gherardesca

In early XVII century the Hotel property was owned by Alessandro de’ Medici, also known as Pope Leo XI, but it was his sister, Costanza de’ Medici, the widow of count Ugo della Gherardesca, who would make the house her own. However, a few days before his death, her brother changed his will, embroiling Costanza in a legal wrangle that was resolved only after her own demise. In 1607, her son Simone was confirmed as the rightful owner of a property that would stay in the della Gherardesca family for almost three centuries. True to her pious nature, Costanza’s one important addition to her Florence home was a small ground floor room frescoed with scenes from the life of Guido della Gherardesca, a saintly Medieval ancestor of her late husband (Guido’s hermitage would later give its name to Tenuta San Guido, the wine estate that makes the famous “Super Tuscan” Sassicaia).