The Medici Villa of Castello Historical and artistic notes Known also as the Villa Reale, the Medici villa of Castello is one of the most fascinating among the Medici residences because of its beautiful location between Mount Morello and the plain, but also especially for the perfect balance between the majesty of the building, the beauty of the formal garden and park behind the house – filled with fountains and works of art – and the spatial harmony of the areas in front of the villa, the large, semielliptical yard and the long viottolone, or broad carriage path. An ensemble that, despite the changes undergone over time by the territorial context, still succeeds today in evoking the ambience of a place of delight and idyllic perfection only a very short distance from the city. If, already in the Roman era, there existed in the area structures aimed at conveying the abundant waters (a Roman aqueduct with castella, or cisterns, for distributing water, hence, the origin of the area’s name) to supply the nearby city and its thermae (public baths), evident signs of a building for living and farming purposes can be detected beginning in the 12th century. The architectural elements identified in the restorations (in particular, two beautiful octagonal stone pillars with foliated capitals, still visible on the ground floor) attest to the existence of a gothic building that had risen around an even older fortified tower. In the 1 th and 1 th centuries, the subsequent enlargements of the structure (which over time belonged to: the Del Milanese in 1 2 , the Lotteringhi della Stufa from 1 , and afterwards, beginning in 1 , to the Medici, ville e giardini nei dintorni di firenze
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precisely to Giovanni and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, Lorenzo the Magnificent’s cousins) made the ancient “manor house with a walled garden”, as cited in the 1 land register, into a grand residence, developing around a courtyard, especially thanks to the 1 8 work commissioned by Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. On the front, the two ponds – large basins part of the old hydraulic structures of the Roman period – have always characterized the place and its toponymy, remaining visible and in use until the late 18th century. In the 1 th and 16th centuries, the villa was decorated with splendid works of art, the most famous being the Spring and the Birth of Venus by Botticelli. After having become the property of Giovanni delle Bande Nere and his wife Maria Salviati, who lived here with their son Cosimo, the future duke of Florence, the Villa of Castello was completely transformed by the young and strong-willed lord of Florence as soon as he came to power in all of Tuscany (1 ), entrusting the design and its execution to a group of engineers and artists led by Niccolò Tribolo. The garden, the true heart of the renovation commissioned by Cosimo i, was thus completely transformed together with the villa itself, even if the duke was certainly less interested in the latter. The building was progressively enlarged towards the east, first (1 81 0) by Tribolo, later (beginning in 1 0) by Vasari and finally (1 88-1 ) by Buontalenti, thus reaching its current size. At the same time, it was aligned in respect to the central courtyard, reinforcing the axiality with the construction of a central portal and the restructuring of the façades. The new symmetry is clearly seen from the large yard in front of the villa, whereas its rela-