Villa Il Casale stands at via del Pozzo 1 in Sesto Fiorentino, on a panoramic rise reached by a cypress avenue that runs alongside the road. The first records date from the fourteenth century, when it belonged to one Lapo di Ridolfo: the windows and the entrance door survive from that period. In the fifteenth century it was bought by the Fei family and about a century later by the Pagni Bordoni of Pescia, the family of Lorenzo d'Andrea, secretary to Cosimo I de' Medici.
What to see
The villa probably owes its present appearance to the enlargement of those years: the architect, who remains anonymous, kept the buildings and colonnades low to reduce their impact on the landscape, and the façade is dominated by a columned loggia that gives the whole a horizontal line, with views over Florence and Sesto. Passing to the Carlini family, it was embellished in 1560, and in 1593 the large covered fishpond, the basin, the great room also used as a theatre and the underground nymphaeum were added to the garden, the latter with three rooms aligned in perspective with the villa's salon, perhaps built on the ruins of a Roman bath building. The Carlini also had the chapel and some rooms frescoed by Giovanni da San Giovanni.
The Italian garden spreads over two terraces stepping down in front of the villa, with geometric beds edged with box around a central fountain; to the south three low neo-medieval turrets serve as lookouts, and to the west are the fishpond and the park. After the Carlini the villa passed to the Saint Seigne and then to the Tognini family, and in the twentieth century it also belonged to the cycling champion Gino Bartali.
Visiting
The villa is privately owned: whether it can be visited should be checked beforehand.
Our editors' tip
In 1615 Cosimo II, a guest at the villa, praised the architecture of the nymphaeum and its elaborate water features.
