Palazzo di San Clemente (also called Palazzo del Pretendente) is a residential palace in Florence

Florence

Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....

, Italy.

History

Along the current Via Capponi there was a small building visible in plan of the city from 1584, which was acquired and enlarged by Luigi di Toledo, brother of Grand Duchess Eleanor of Toledo. Late Renaissance art biographer Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari was an Italian painter, writer, historian, and architect, who is famous today for his biographies of Italian artists, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.-Biography:...

 speaks about it in the Life of Jacopo Sansovino

Jacopo Sansovino

Jacopo d'Antonio Sansovino was an Italian sculptor and architect, known best for his works around the Piazza San Marco in Venice. Andrea Palladio, in the Preface to his Quattro Libri was of the opinion that Sansovino's Biblioteca Marciana was the best building erected since Antiquity...

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In 1634 the Guadagni family bought it, entrusting architect Gherardo Silvani

Gherardo Silvani

Gherardo Silvani was an Italian architect and sculptor, active mainly in Florence and other sites in Tuscany during the Baroque period....

 of the renovation of the palace and the garden (1644). The edifice was thus transformed into a sub-urban villa, of the type then known as a Casino. The family owned it until 1777, when they sold it to Bonny Prince Charlie

Charles Edward Stuart

Prince Charles Edward Louis John Casimir Sylvester Severino Maria Stuart commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie or The Young Pretender was the second Jacobite pretender to the thrones of Great Britain , and Ireland...

, who then used the alias of count of Albany; since the latter was the legitimist pretender to the thrones of England

Kingdom of England

The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England...

, Scotland

Kingdom of Scotland

The Kingdom of Scotland was a Sovereign state in North-West Europe that existed from 843 until 1707. It occupied the northern third of the island of Great Britain and shared a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England...

, Ireland

Kingdom of Ireland

The Kingdom of Ireland refers to the country of Ireland in the period between the proclamation of Henry VIII as King of Ireland by the Crown of Ireland Act 1542 and the Act of Union in 1800. It replaced the Lordship of Ireland, which had been created in 1171...

 and France

Kingdom of France

The Kingdom of France was one of the most powerful states to exist in Europe during the second millennium.It originated from the Western portion of the Frankish empire, and consolidated significant power and influence over the next thousand years. Louis XIV, also known as the Sun King, developed a...

, the palace is also called Palazzo del Pretendente. Later it went to Simone Velluti Zuti, duke of San Clemente, whence the current name. Russian prince Nikolai Demidov was his guest here in 1882.

The edifice is presently a seat of the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Florence

University of Florence

The University of Florence is a higher study institute in Florence, central Italy. One of the largest and oldest universities in the country, it consists of 12 faculties...

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