Katia Lysy is a journalist and literary translator. She now assists her mother, Benedetta Origo, in the management and development of the family estate of La Foce in Tuscany.
![An aerial view of an Italian manor in a green, sunny hillscape](https://www.nybg.org/content/uploads/2024/08/La-Foce-23-28597-3.1-160x53.jpg)
La Foce:
Paradise in Tuscany
October 8, 2024
11 a.m.–12 p.m. | Ross Hall
Situated on the hills overlooking Tuscany’s Val d’Orcia—a UNESCO World Heritage Site—La Foce is home to one of the most beautiful private gardens in Italy.
Biographer and writer Iris Origo and her husband Antonio purchased the La Foce property in 1924. Together with architect Cecil Pinsent, they transformed it from a desertified landscape into a thriving estate consisting of a 15th-century villa, sprawling fields of wheat, olive groves, and vineyards, as well as a large, terraced garden featuring box hedges, a rose garden, fountains, and a wisteria-covered pergola.
On October 8 at NYBG, Katia Lysy, current steward of La Foce and granddaughter of the Origos, will reveal the dramatic story of this resilient and iconic Renaissance property, as told in her newly published book, La Foce: Paradise in Tuscany, featuring stunning photographs by Simon Upton and Matteo Carassale. Gregory Long, NYBG’s President Emeritus, will introduce this special talk.
Copies of Lysy’s book will be on sale. Book signing to follow.
About the Speaker
![A person stands in front of a bright shelf full of books while being photographed](https://www.nybg.org/content/uploads/2024/08/af644bdb-5484-40f1-8ed2-43a8ba6c293a-160x160.jpg)