Twelve vil­las and two gar­dens spread across the Tus­can land­scape make up this site which bears tes­ti­mo­ny to the influ­ence the Medici fam­i­ly exert­ed over mod­ern Euro­pean cul­ture through its patron­age of the arts. Built between the 15th&nbsp,and 17th&nbspcenturies, they rep­re­sent an inno­v­a­tive sys­tem of con­struc­tion in har­mo­ny with nature and ded­i­cat­ed to leisure, the arts and knowl­edge. The vil­las embody an inno­v­a­tive form and func­tion, a new type of prince­ly res­i­dence that dif­fered from both the farms owned by rich Flo­ren­tines of the peri­od and from the mil­i­tary might of baro­nial cas­tles. The Medici vil­las form the first exam­ple of the con­nec­tion between archi­tec­ture, gar­dens, and the envi­ron­ment and became an endur­ing ref­er­ence for prince­ly res­i­dences through­out Italy and Europe. Their gar­dens and inte­gra­tion into the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment helped devel­op the appre­ci­a­tion of land­scape char­ac­ter­is­tic Human­ism and the Renais­sance.