The property was purchased in 1417. At the death of Giovanni di Bicci, Cosimo il Vecchio set about remodelling the beloved villa around its loggia-enclosed central courtyard. When Cosimo the Elder died, at Careggi itself in 1464, and his son followed him to the grave just five years later, the nephew Lorenzo il Magnifico became the head of the Medici family. It was to this villa that Lorenzo brought his friends, members of the Plato Academy, and here that he spent the last years of his life, until his own death in 1492. Surviving descriptions of the garden as it was in the time of Lorenzo speak of vegetation composed of myrtles, olives, oaks, poplars, pines, plane trees, citrus trees and such exotic spices as frankincense and myrrh. The description suggests that the garden was in two parts, one for the cultivation of flowers and fruit and another "wilder" part. After Lorenzo il Magnifico's death, the villa gradually began to fall into a state of disrepair, a decline that was halted by cardinal Carlo who, after 1615, undertook extensive projects to transform the interior and the garden. Having passed into the hands of the Lorraine household, when they came to power in the Grand-Duchy following the demise of the Medici dynasty, the property was bought in 1779 by Vincenzo Orsi. The Orsi family in turn sold the estate to English geologist and natural history scholar Francis Sloane, in 1848. It was Sloane who transformed the garden into a "romantic" park, introducing many exotic trees, many of which still stand (Lebanon and Himalayan cedars, Californian sequoias, Greek arbutus (or Greek Strawberry Tree) and palms)[2], and constructed an orangery with a valuable collection of citrus fruits and many varieties of palm tree. After Sloane's death the property changed hands several times, and was eventually bought by a hospital, the Arcispedale di Santa Maria Nuova, in 1936.