Villa Medici

Villa Medici
Villa Medici
	Villa Medici in Rome
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General information
Type	Museum
Location	Rome, Italy
Coordinates	41°54′28.8″N 12°28′58.8″E / 41.908000°N 12.483000°E
Current tenants	French Academy in Rome,
Completed	1544
Owner	Government of France
Design and construction
Architect(s)	Annibale Lippi

The Villa Medici (Italian pronunciation: [ˈvilla ˈmɛːditʃi]) is a sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist^[1] villa and an architectural complex with 7-hectare Italian garden, contiguous with the more extensive Borghese gardens, on the Pincian Hill next to Trinità dei Monti in the historic centre of Rome, Italy.

The Villa Medici, founded by Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany and now property of the French State,^{[citation needed]} has housed the French Academy in Rome and has welcomed winners of the Rome Prize since 1803, to promote and represent artistic creation in all its fields, an instance being the musical evocation of its garden fountains features in Ottorino Respighi's Fountains of Rome.

The Villa Medici lies within the historic district of Rome, inside the perimeter walls built by Emperor Aurelian in the third century, and the Gianicolense walls built by Pope Urban VIII in 1643, which was declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1980, though it is not specifically identified amongst the mostly Roman-era monuments of that listing, and it is not part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site the "Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany," ascribed in 2013.