The villa was erected by order of Cardinal Ricci di Montepulciano in 1544. It was acquired by Cardinal Fernando di Medici in 1576. Since 1803 it is the French Academy in Rome. The academy was created in 1666 by the French King Louis XIV in order to enable painters to study in Rome. Nicolas Poussin was one of the first students, Ingres was director, and Fragonard and Boucher were students of the French Academy, but also musicians like Berlioz and Debussy studied here. Today the villa hosts occasional concerts and exhibitions. Its gardens can be visited.

The Villa Medici is a sixteenth-century Italian Mannerist 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, has housed the French Academy in Rome and has welcomed winners of the Prix de Rome 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 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.