Trebbio Castle

Trebbio Castle
This villa castle was built on the ruins of an earlier feudal fortress by Michelozzo Michelozzi at the request of Cosimo de' Medici. This imposing structure stands at 500 metres above sea level on a hill that dominates the entire Mugello territory and which, in the past, was the intersection of important communications routes. The building is made of a massive square central body with a display of projections and is overlooked by a tower with a crenelation and a sloping base. Today, it is surrounded by tall monumental cypress trees and continues to hold a typical Italian garden on the west side, and spacious terraced kitchen-gardens to the south with a splendid 17 th century pergola supported by red brick columns. Lorenzo the Magnificent greatly loved to hunt there; the famous captain of fortune Giovanni dalle Bande Nere, his wife Maria Salviati and his son Cosimo I, the future Grand Duke of Tuscany, resided there. In 1476, the young Amerigo Vespucci, who was running from Florence and the plague, sojourned there. The Trebbio Castle belonged to the Medici family until, in 1644, Ferdinand II sold it to Giuliano Serragli for 113,500 scudos.

In the ancient fief of Monte di Croce, property first of the Counts Guidi and then of the Bishop of Florence, the Pazzi family built this castle, sure widening a most ancient and modest high medieval fortification. Between the 12th and the 14th century the Pazzi acquired the control or the property of all the surrounding lands and made Trebbio their stronghold in the heart of the countryside. In the '400 the castle became place of reunion of artists and was enriched by a loggia with columns of stone and many other art works, as a fresco Andrea del Castagno, that at the time adorned Chapel of the castle, that now is exposed in the museum of Pitti Palace in Florence. In the 16th the century were added windows with the iron gates.
The complex has a rectangular shape, articulated around the courtyard approachable exclusively through a gate protected by a tower. The gate is opened in the center of the main front, toward the bottom of the valley. Part of the walled curtain and towers still are endowed with machicolation - supported by beautiful brackets in stone - and battlements built in bricks. The legend says that here in the 1478 was hatched the plot against the Medici who caused to the killing of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo. Failed the plot the castle was confiscated from the Florentine Republic. The structure was restored in the last century, today is a private property.