Unequalled Museums in the Mugello area

The refurbished museum, inside the Villa Pecori Giraldi, condenses the fruit of the Chini family's multifaceted activity, which began in Borgo San Lorenzo in 1906, ranging from architectural complements to ceramic and stoneware furnishing objects to stained glass windows. Inside the Chini Museum, visitors will find a permanent collection dedicated to the works and history of Galileo Chini and family and temporary exhibitions exploring the contemporary.

Inside the Museum is the Children's Museum: seven rooms, also designed using company waste materials, in which children are free to express their talents, taking inspiration from 20th century artists and contributing, with their own creations, to build an exhibition of creative ‘traces’. The Children's Museum is temporarily closed.

The museum occupies the house where Giotto is traditionally thought to have been born in 1267, and acts as an archive centre for documents and accounts relating to the life of the great master.

It takes visitors on animaginary tour of Giotto’s work and also has a reproduction of the workshop of a 14th-century painter, with illustrative material about the fresco technique.

Named after the locally born Beato Angelico, the museum was founded to protect and enhance the religious art works of the area, which have been displayed in such a way that they can be grasped in their historical and religious context, combining the historic and artistic aspect with the anthropological one.

Of particular interest is a Saint John the Baptist in glazed terracotta, attributed to Andrea della Robbia; a mid-15th-century Madonna and Child and a fine Late Gothic panel painting of the Virgin Mary with Saints and Prophets.

The Religious Art Collection is in the Oratory of the Compagnia di San Jacopo, which dates to the early 16th century and stands next to the Romanesque Parish Church of Sant’Agata, the most important religious building in the Mugello. The 12th-century church has a nave and two side aisles divided by large columns, and houses a number of artworks.

The museum has paintings, sculptures and minor art works from Sant’Agata Church and other local churches and tabernacles, including the Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine by Bicci di Lorenzo (1430), Two Angels, a Madonna and Child with the Young Saint John the Baptistandsome Della Robbia terracottas. There is a collection of liturgical hangings in the small sacristy.

The Convent of Bosco ai Frati, which dates back to before the year 1000, was rebuilt by Michelozzo in the first half of the 15th century at the wishes of Cosimo de’ Medici, who possessed the nearby castles of Cafaggiolo and Trebbio. One of the Medici’s gifts to the convent was a wooden Crucifix attributed to Donatello, part of a collection of religious art that includes paintings, furnishings, liturgical hangings and old books.

The Museum represents the last missinglink of the Territorial Museum System. It has an exhibition layout of different levels of interpretation, general or in depth, by way of two different guidelines for the visit: chronological-topographic or educative-thematic. On the whole, this is a singular exhibition which shows, together for the first time, the so called “Fiesolane stones”, that were all found in this area. They are elaborate sign stones in sandstone, which, when placed on the top of the tumulus were used to denote the presence of an Etruscan tomb, as well as indicating the importance of the belonging gens. 10 stele and cippi, decorated in various ways are present.

Particular attentionis dedicated to the younger visitors: a didactic room has been fitted with magnetic thematic panels, in which, on the one hand the Etruscan language “comes to life” and they can play with the letters of the alphabet and on the other, school age children are helped to fit the historical-archaeological periods represented into the right age.

The archeological site revealed the Romanic church of S. Martino al Poggio and various materials that date back to the period between the sixth century B.C. and the first century A.D. It also revealed the perimeter of an Etruscan building. Nevertheless, the most interesting finding is a stele, which was part of a sixth century tomb. The archeological findings are displayed in the Town Hall.

The educationally oriented Archaeological Documentation Centre, situated near the Parish Church of Sant’Agata, houses items relating to human presence in the Mugello from the Early Palaeolithic (300,000 years ago) through to the Metal Age (1000 BC). There are Etruscan, Roman, medieval and Renaissance objects. Adjacent to the museum is the reconstruction of a prehistoric village.

On the second floor of Palazzo dei Capitani, which dates to 1385 and was remodelled during the 17th century, is a museum that houses ancient traces of human settlement in the area, even in very rugged, inaccessible places, rangingfrom prehistoric times through to the Middle Ages. There are items from pre-Roman and Roman settlements, plus materials found in local castles and dating to the 14th–17th centuries.

Housed in the medieval Palazzo dei Vicari in Scarperia the museum preserves the knife manufacturing’s old tradition. 

It is divided into two sections: one focuses on the history of knives and their uses, and the different types produced down the ages, while the other is a workshop, where the various phases of the craftsman’s production of knives can be observed.

In order to preserve the sense of a tradition and of a kind of life that has now disappeared, Faliero Lepri (‘Leprino’) reconstructed, over the course of several decades, a series of environments featuring local Mugello craft activities in the period between 1920 and 1950. These are peopled by animated characters connected up by a network of electric wires enabling them to move in synchrony, reproducing the gestures of their roles in a true-to-life fashion.

In a farmhouse that probably dates all the way back to the 14th century is a collection of over two thousand tools, objects and documents relating to rural life in the Mugello, characterized by farming, woodland activities and the production of charcoal.

A naturalistic and historic trail illustrates changes in rural culture and the landscape and reconstructs the different phases of the various woodland activities. There is also a botanical garden with plants native to the Tosco-Romagnolo Apennines.

Occupying the cellars of Villa Spalletti di Poggio Reale, the museum traces the history of viticulture and winemaking in the Val di Sieve, with particular emphasis on the techniques used. Tools and equipment, photographs, videos and original documents help to illustrate the profound relationship between wine and the area.

There is also a collection of blown-glass, straw-covered fiaschi produced from the 18th century onwards and a series of exhibits offering stimulus for the senses.

Housed in the medieval Palazzo dei Capitani, the museum documents the everyday life and working activities of the Apennine mountain communities by means of objects collected from the local area and which were in use until the depopulation of the mountains: farm and craft tools, domestic furnishings, devotional and folk art objects: including icons and a wooden Crucifix; photographs and audiovisual material.

The Museum of Pietra Serena – a local grey sandstone – is housed in the underground chambers of the medieval fortress, and the entrance is in the moat, which came to light during restoration work together with the 15th-century bastions designed by Antonio da Sangallo.

Divided into six sections, the museum explores the various phases from initial quarrying through to the finished product. An area is given over to more artistic items like Renaissance capitals and low reliefs, besides a selection of stonemason’s tools.

The museum is located in the Abbey of San Pietro in Moscheta, founded in 1034, whose history is described in the first rooms of the museum. It charts the way the Vallombrosan monks used the resources of the woods.

The other exhibits trace the history of the Apennine landscape and the “signs” inscribed upon it by human presence, starting with the landscape of woodland and castles around the turn of the millennium and then moving on to the introduction of agriculture, the major changes wrought on the natural landscape in the 18th and 19th century, followed by the gradual abandoning of the mountains and finally the recent rediscovery of its cultural values.

The MUGOT Museum was created in 2011 to preserve the memory of the Second World War in Tuscany, with particular attention to the events in September 1944 when the Apennines north of Florence were a focal point. Especially the area between the Futa Pass and the Giogo Pass was one of the places most affected by the furious attacks along the Gothic Line, the last fortified defense line prepared by the German army in Italy.

The museum offers documents, textbooks, oral records and original WW2 footage to visitors, scholars and students and can also arrange battlefield tour on demand in order to give a detailed explanation of the events visiting the original outposts.

The permanent and temporary thematic exhibitions are the result of discoveries, private collections, or donations of local people. Upon request guided tours of the Museum and to the battlefield.

The mission of the center is to give everyone the opportunity to remember the months before the Liberation of our country, precursors of the arrival of Democracy and the return of Freedom to Italy.

The spectacular nature of the materials on display, in fact, does not want in any way to enhance the grandeur of modern warfare but rather to bring as many people as possible to the reflection and awareness, and above all trying to understand them historically, it is the first step to take in order not to have to relive the tragedies, destruction and despair.

Since 2012 the centre is intended also as a meeting point for military vehicles collectors, hosting the headquarters of the Italian History & Military Veihcles club and most of all the official Italian office of Military Vehicle Preservation Association which can offer to its Italian and foreign members support, assistance and care when visiting the territory.