Villa Vai al Mulinaccio

Renaissance villa in the Bisenzio Valley with a walled garden and nymphaeum, Casa della Memoria of Filippo Sassetti, open to visitors only occasionally.

Opening hours unknown

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About the museum

The villa was built by Cosimo Sassetti between the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, near Schignano, in the Bisenzio Valley. It later passed to the Strozzi and, from 1661, to the Vai family, who made it the centre of a vast farm with around thirty-six farms, the largest in the valley; the Vai family were responsible for the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century extensions that gave the complex its present appearance. Today it is owned by the Comune di Vaiano.

The Renaissance core is linked to the memory of the navigator Filippo Sassetti (1540–1588), who owned the villa and is remembered here through the letters he sent to his family from India; for this reason the site is part of the circuit of the Case della Memoria (Houses of Memory). Around a side courtyard lie the villa, the carpentry workshop, the washhouses and the rooms for pressing olives; in the owners’ part one can admire wooden ceilings and frescoed walls, while among the farm buildings the old kitchen known as the “cucinone” (large kitchen) survives, with a large fireplace supported by stone brackets.

In the walled garden, laid out between 1737 and 1738, stands an elegant nymphaeum with three niches, decorated with mosaics and mother-of-pearl; nearby is the oratory of Sant’Antonio Abate, built around 1722, with eighteenth-century statues by local artists from the Prato area. The villa is used by the Comune for events, ceremonies and exhibitions and is open to visitors only occasionally.