The official tourism website of the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Florence
The official tourism website of the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Florence
The official tourism website of the Municipality and Metropolitan City of Florence
A walking route, easy and of particular historical and architectural interest, that leads to the places where the Medici family lived: the Villa diCafaggiolo and the Trebbio Castle.
We start from San Piero a Sieve climbing up to the 16th-century Medici fortress of San Martino and then reach both historic homes.
The route, which takes about 4 hours, is about 12,5 km long with an elevation gain of 245 m. The trail being used is part of ring n. 8 of the SO.F.T. hiking circuit.
The Fortress of San Martino stands on a hill that dominates the built-up area of San Piero a Sieve. Works started thanks to Cosimo I dei Medici at the end of the Sixteenth Century under pressure from the inhabitants, tired of continuous pillaging, but works continued for a long time, given the size of the site, and ended at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century. The structure has an irregular plan, even if it is very close to the shape of a rectangle, reinforced by as many as nine bastions and two gates: the southern Florentine gate and the northern Bolognese one. Inside the imposing walls, located near the first gate, where the risk of attacks was supposed to be lower, stands the keep, a smaller fort also having an irregular plan with five sides and walls with bastions. In the remaining area, there were windmills, barracks, deposits for weapons and ammunition, tanks, workshops for the repair and construction of cannons and other weapons and a chapel.
The Villa di Cafaggiolo is anancient Medici family property acquired in the 14th century. It is located in the Mugello area, on the road to Bologna.
It was originally a medieval farm. In 1451 Cosimo the Elder asked the architect Michelozzo to refurbish it and make it grander while also transforming it into a summer residence with a garden for leisure and rest.
The ancestral home of the Medici, it retains the overall aspect of a medieval building with different sized square towers and machiolated battlements. In plan, it is a square-shaped complex, determined by the assemblage of medieval buildings and additional buildings around two asymmetrical courtyards. It is the prototype of the early fortified Medici Villa. This is the typical transitional solution between medieval and Renaissance architecture and the first appearance of the domus rustica.
At the moment undergoing restoration.
The Villa del Trebbio was acquired in the 14th century in the early days of the rise in the Medici's fortunes. It was built on the ruins of a Lombard tower. Restored by Michelozzo, its architecture retains medieval motifs with a large square tower closely associated with a tall residential building punctuated with regualr window openings on its first floor.
The internal courtyard has a glazed loggia with slender pillars and an exterior staircase. The main building is crowned with an exterior walkaway in medieval style. Located on the top of a hill, it dominates the Mugello plain.
