Address: Località Pratolino- Tel. 055/409427 (Vaglia)
How to get there: by car state highway 65 (Via Bolognese) - by
coach ATAF bus 25/a
Nowadays Villa
Demidoff is famous above all for its immense park (over thirty
hectares crossed by various well-marked routes). In the past the
park was enlivened by imaginative waterworks. Little remains of
the complex built by Buontalenti for Francesco I de' Medici as
the fabulous residence for his beloved Bianca Cappello. Ferdinand
III of Lorraine had the villa, which had fallen into ruin in the
course of the centuries, torn down. In 1872, the estate passed to
the Demidoff family, whom we have to thank for restoring the park
and transforming the former paggeria into what is now the villa.
The colossal "Apennine ", a cyclopic sculpture rising
from a lake, by Giambologna, the flight of steps with the
fountain of the god Pan, and Buontalenri's octagonal chapel are
some of` what remains of the sixteenth-century layout.
