Vaglia

What is called Villa Demidoff today is what remains of the Medici villa of Pratolino: the villa proper was demolished in 1822, and the land was bought by the Demidoff, a family of Russian origin, who took the secondary building — the paggerie, that is the pages' quarters — enlarged it, rebuilt it and made it their own villa. The park, upset and stripped though it has been over the centuries, remains one of the largest and most significant in Tuscany, and among the chief ones in the English style. Not far off, at Bivigliano, there is another sixteenth-century villa, built probably to a design of Bernardo Buontalenti by the Ginori on the ruins of a castle, in the middle of a wood of twelve hectares that Filippo Ginori kept as a hunting reserve. And on the mountain stands the sanctuary of Montesenario, one of the most important in the region.

The church of Sant'Andrea a Cerreto Maggio was built in 1260 on the ruins of the castle that stood there, and its founders and patrons were the Cerretani. Cerreto is the wood of turkey oaks typical of this place, and the family took its name from just here, where it held the castle in fief; then the Cerretani moved to Florence and were buried by the Duomo, along the street which from them is called via dei Cerretani. The church of San Cresci a Macioli, restored in 1448, is remembered instead for one of its parish priests of the fifteenth century, the pievano Arlotto, and for his witticisms. And the Della Robbia are everywhere in these parts: a San Lorenzo attributed to Luca in Santo Stefano a Pescina, parts of another of his altarpieces at Santa Maria a Paterno, an altarpiece by Andrea at San Romolo di Bivigliano — where there is also a wooden Saint John the Baptist attributed to Michelozzo — and robbian festoons in San Pietro at Vaglia.