Settignano is afrazione on a hillside northeast ofFlorence, Italy. The littleborgo of Settignano carries a familiar name for having produced three sculptors of theFlorentine Renaissance,Desiderio da Settignano and the Gamberini brothers, better known asBernardo Rossellino andAntonio Rossellino. The youngMichelangelo lived with a sculptor and his wife in Settignano—in a farmhouse that is now the "Villa Michelangelo"— where his father owned a marble quarry. In 1511 another sculptor was born there,Bartolomeo Ammannati. The marble quarries of Settignano produced this series of sculptors.
Roman remains are to be found in theborgo which some have claimed was named afterSettimio orSeptimius Severus—in whose honor a statue was erected in the oldest square in the 16th century, destroyed in 1944— though habitation here long preceded the Roman emperor. The name may be a corruption from the termFundus Septimianus.[1]
Settignano was a secure resort for estivation for members of theGuelf faction of Florence.Giovanni Boccaccio andNiccolò Tommaseo both appreciated its freshness, among the vineyards and olive groves that are the preferred setting for even the most formal Italian gardens.[citation needed][citation needed]
Mark Twain and his wife stayed at the Villa Viviani in Settignano from September 1892 to June 1893. While there, Twain wrote 1,800 pages including a first draft ofPudd'nhead Wilson. He said the villa "afford[ed] the most charming view to be found on this planet".[citation needed]
In 1898,Gabriele d'Annunzio purchased the trecento Villa della Capponcina on the outskirts of Settignano, in order to be nearer to his loverEleonora Duse, at the Villa Porziuncola.[citation needed] Near Settignano are theVilla Gamberaia, a 14th-century villa with an 18th-century terraced garden, and secludedVilla I Tatti, the villa ofBernard Berenson, now a center of Italian Renaissance studies run byHarvard University.
In 2019 Carolyn McPherson said: "My family lived in Settignano in 1955 and 1956; I was 10. Many houses in the village were badly damaged, apparently by explosives. We were able to rent a villa about 1/4 of a mile from the entrance to the Villa Gamberaia. We were told that the Gamberaia had been headquarters for the Nazi command in Florence, and that the owner of our villa had been a collaborator with the Germans and thus was apersona non grata in the village. In 1955--10 years after the end of WWII--it was still possible to find large fragments of burned maps lying in the olive groves below the Gamberaia. We visited the famous gardens once; most of the trees and shrubs were dead, and the statuary broken".[citation needed][who?]
Settignano houses the parish church ofSanta Maria Assunta with its artworks.
43°47′N11°19′E / 43.783°N 11.317°E /43.783; 11.317
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