"Some English have arrived", the hotel porter said to the owner, "but I haven’t understood if they are Russians or Germans". This anectode is told by Giuliana Artom Treves in her book Anglo-fiorentini di cento anni fa.

In the 19th century the percentage of English people in Florence was so high that the terms “English” and “foreigner” became synonymous.

“Florence is a resort for strangers from every part of the world. The gay society is a mixture of all nations, of whom one-third may be Florentine, one-third English and the remaining part equally divided between Russians, Germans, French, Poles, and Americans.” Cit. N.P. Willis, Pencillings by the way, London 1864

That’s how the names of some places, objects and habits derived from the prevailing presence of the English. As the English Cemetery (actually a non-Catholic cemetery), where Elisabeth Barret Browning was buried. She went down to Florence seeking relief from her poor health and became a supporter of Risorgimento and the struggle for the unification of Italy. Like many British, explained Samuel Rogers in Italy, a poem, 1830, who came “If rich, they go to enjoy; if poor, to retrench; if sick, to recover; if studious, to learn; if learned, to relax from their studies.”

English was also Mr Roberts’ pharmacy. Roberts was a chemist who came to Florence for health reasons and, in consideration of his pharmacy’s popularity, decided to start his own production.

At his death the business kept on flourishing until it became Manetti & Roberts, acclaimed for its Borotalco and Acqua di Rose.

A city with so many foreigners obviously needed hotels, which right in those days were becoming full-fledged accommodation options, rather than private homes where passing-by travelers were taken in.

Many hotels were named after places in the United Kingdom: like the Hotel Bristol (in Lungarno Vespucci in the photo, before becoming Helvetia e Bristol at via de’ Pescioni). Or the Hotel York, the Hotel des Iles Britannique and the Hotel d’Angleterre.

All these British people in town needed their places of worship: what is now the Waldensian Church at via La Marmora, was an Anglican church where the British gathered in 1910 to celebrate the recent death of their sovereign Edward VII.

In his views of Florence, he shows an unprecedented prowess to combine pictorial sensitivity of romantic origin with the medium’s ability to witness the changes affectioning the territory.

Seen as a whole, his photos are a significant iconographic repertory of the taste and the idea of Tuscany of the foreigners who were his most important clients.

Let’s go back to these wealthy English citizens who arrived in Florence and settled down at prestigious villas. Let’s take John Temple Leader, an English politician of radical ideas who had inherited a vast fortune from his father, a trader. Born in 1810, he left England in 1844 without giving much explanation, moving first to the South of France and then to Florence.

In 1855 he bought the dilapidated medieval castle of Vincigliata, in 1857 a house at Piazza Pitti. He also bought Villa I Tatti later taken over by Bernard Berenson.

Vincigliata was furnished in that medieval style that was so fashionable in those days.

In 1850 he bought Villa Pazzi at Borgo di Maiano, with its old quarry turned into a pond.

A considerable number of British nationals chose Florence as their residence and bought villas, often the most beautiful ones, in the city and its surroundings.

Frederick Stibbert (1838) is still well known thanks to the museum named after him. We can see him in this photo taken at the racecourse (he’s the gentleman with a moustache on the left of the picture).

Stibbert was born in Florence from an English father and an Italian mother.

The descendant of a military family (he also joined Garibaldi as a volunteer in 1866), Stibbert spent almost his whole life at Villa Montughi, bought by his mother at his father’s death. He gradually turned it into a museum of the history of costumes and traditions, containing objects he had bought during his long travels abroad. He continued to live there until his death in 1906, without ever separating the living quarters from the exhibition ones.

In a letter to his brother Thomas, he explained his choice:

“The motive which has induced me to fix my residence in Florence is the mildness of the climate, the protection afforded to all foreigners, and the liberty of living unfettered by any restraint or odious civil obligations.”

Living almost in the same years as Stibbert was Alexander Fagan (1845-1903), an Anglo-Italian and the descendant of English diplomats. He had modernist taste, as evidenced by his choice to have a villa built in the city and to commission his portrait from John Singer Sargent. The well-known American artist was born in Florence in 1856, where he studied and where he often came back after moving to United States.

Alexander Fagan, a painter and an art historian, worked at the British Museum and died in Florence at the very beginning of the new century.

A major role in this story of British presence is played by the women who are part of this story as important characters in the social, cultural and also economic life of the city.

Janet Ross (1842-1927) came to Florence with her husband in 1867; she purchased Villa di Poggio Gherardo in 1888 and renovated it in the “medieval-inspired” style of those days. For its furnishings she turned to Florentine antique dealers, and she ended up starting a trade in furniture and paintings which improved her finances. She was also a writer and a journalist committed to promote the image of Florence abroad. Among her books: Italian sketches and Florentine villas but also Leaves from our Tuscan kitchen or how to cook vegetables.

Lady Alice Keppel (1868) was a Scottish noblewoman, Edward VII’s mistress and the great-grandmother of Queen consort Camilla.

At Edward’s death (in 1910), she left England and moved to Florence where she purchased Villa dell’Ombrellino, where Galileo and Ugo Foscolo had also lived among others. She refurbished both the building and the surrounding garden which in 1926 was transformed into an Italian garden designed by an English architect.

At her death in 1947 the villa was inherited by her daughter Violet Trefusis (1894) who in France, where she moved and married, created a circle of intellectuals, artists and politicians (Proust, Cocteau, Dior and Mitterand among others). She dedicated a novel to the city “I Papagalli sull’Arno”, where she portrays the city in a disillusioned, rather scornful but also loving tone. She also died at her villa in 1972, as her mother.

Among the British who had moved to Florence were photographers, such as John Brampton Philpot (1812-1878). He appears among the pioneers of photography in Tuscany and in particular in Florence. He began working in the city using the calotype technique in the early 1850s and then continued with a commercial activity of reproductions of art and views on collodion plates.

Philpot lived in Florence until his death, in 1878.