Castle of Cafaggiolo

The Castle of Cafaggiolo was a Medici residence, used by the powerful Tuscan family more than anything else to give receptions, balls and parties for distinguished guests. Originally it was a real fortress in miniature, with two towers, the drawbridge, walls and moats, but today little remains of all these structures, perhaps because of the restructuring made by the bourgeois princes who bought the castle in 1864. This castle represents one of the great masterpieces of the Renaissance architecture. The original structure dates back to 1300, when it was a fortress of the Republic; it was transformed into a residential building in 1443, by Michelozzo, under the direct orders of Cosimo the Elder. Summer residence of the Medici family, it was particularly loved by Lorenzo de' Medici, who spent his adolescence there and often hosted his court of humanist philosophers. In 1537 the villa became the property of Duke Cosimo I, who enlarged it by building a large hunting reserve, inhabited above all in the autumn months by his sons Francesco I and Ferdinando I; in the 1500s the castle underwent further modifications, with the addition at the rear of a building with a loggia. In 1864 the Castle of Cafaggiolo was sold to the Borghese princes, who made radical changes with the demolition of the rear tower, the filling in of the moat and the opening of a large arch in the surrounding walls. In spite of the changes it underwent over the years, the villa still preserves original elements from Michelozzo's time (the decorative motifs of the main door, the capitals and corbels of the decorations in pietra serena...), as well as the 16th century stables.