Evidence of flourishing lives during the Italian Renaissance were inscribed by the WHC during the Phnom Penh meeting.

Twelve villas and two pleasure gardens spread across the Tuscan countryside tell the story of the enormous influence the Medici family exerted over modern European culture through its patronage of the arts. Built between the 15th and 17th centuries, they villas and gardens show an innovative system of rural construction done 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 habitat, 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 develelop the appreciation of landscape characteristic Humanism and the Renaissance,” the UNESCO description reads.