Starting May 18, 2019, every Saturday and Sunday morning, the public will be able to participate in free guided tours of the Garden of the Medici Villa of Castello. The first example of a formal Italian garden, it was created by Cosimo I de’ Medici.
The initiative is in fact part of the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of Cosimo I and Caterina de’ Medici and was made possible thanks to the recent collaboration between the Polo museale della Toscana and the City of Florence.
Guided tours will be given by MUS.E cultural mediators and will allow visitors to discover the extraordinary botanical varieties of citrus and the main monumental works, including the famous Grotta degli animali, a true theatrum aquae, also known as the Grotta del Diluvio by Giorgio Vasari, among the earliest examples of an artificial cave. A marvelous place that after a long and complex restoration by the Polo Museale della Toscana and the Soprintendenza ABAP of Florence, completed in 2018, is once again visible to the eyes of tourists in its integrity.
The garden of the Villa di Castello, for Vasari “the richest, the most magnificent and the most honored garden in Europe,” is one of the main Medicean places of wonder. Indeed, thanks mainly to the ingenuity and imagination of Niccolò Pericoli known as “Tribolo,” it contained and still contains an extraordinary variety of beauties, surprises and oddities in the continuous interweaving of nature and art.
Tours will be held at 9 and 11 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday from May 18 to July 21. They will resume thereafter from Sept. 7 to 29.
Access to the Villa and visits are free, reservations are required.
For info and reservations: +39 055 2768224 - +39 055 2768558 / info@muse.comune.fi.it / www.musefirenze.it
To consult the program of initiatives for the five-hundredth anniversary of Cosimo I and Caterina de’ Medici: www.500cosimocaterina.it
Free guided tours of the Garden of the Medici Villa of Castello |
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