Florentine villas

VILLA DELL’ AMBROGIANA

The villa of the Ambrogiana, near the junction of the Pesa and the Arno, was built by the Grand Duke Ferdinando I, on the ruins of a more ancient villa belonging to the extinct family of the Ardinghelli. Going from Florence to Pisa by the railway none can fail to admire the villa—a huge cube with a tower at each corner—close to Montelupo. Near by is the small parish church of San Quirico, where, probably the preliminaries of the peace between the Republic of Florence, the Commune of Pistoja and the Counts of Capraja, were signed in 1204.

The Ambrogiana was a favourite hunting-lodge of Ferdinando de’ Medici, and the court spent a week or ten days there several times a year. In October 1592 the marriage of Donna Eleonora Orsini, his niece, to the Duke of Segni, son of Count of Federigo Sforza, was celebrated with great magnificence in the private chapel of the villa. After the ceremony a banquet was given in the large hall, when the Grand Ducal table was served by pages dressed in white satin, with Spanish cloaks of red velvet embroidered in gold with the Medici arms and collars of fine lace; four negroes in rich oriental costume handed them the dishes and the servants who waited on the other guests, seated at small tables round the hall, wore sky-blue liveries trimmed with gold lace and a short sword at their sides. In the evening the terrace was illuminated, fireworks were let off and a cantata was sung. For four days the court remained at the beautiful river-side villa and much game was shot in the well stocked preserves, and then the Duke and Duchess of Segni left for Florence and stayed at the Casino di San Marco, lent to them by Don Antonio de’ Medici, until they returned to the Ambrogiana in December to assist the Grand Duke and Duchess to receive Cardinal de Retz.

In November 1594 Don Antonio returned from Hungary, where he had been fighting the Turks with the Tuscan contingent sent to the aid of the Emperor of Austria by Ferdinando, and joined the court at the Ambrogiana. His descriptions of battles and sieges amused the Princesses, and if he spoke as well as he wrote to his uncle during the campaign the young ladies were right to linger over their sweetmeats. In the summer of the following year Don Antonio left for Transylvania to join the Austrian army, and some of the best names of Florence appear on the roll of the killed and wounded in battle. When he returned in January he again went to the Ambrogiana to report himself to the Grand Duke who was shooting in the woods of Mount Vettolini.⁠[55]

In October 1600 when Maria de’ Medici left Florence for France as the bride of Henry IV, she rested awhile at the Ambrogiana on her way to Pisa. She must have had enough of triumphal arches, addresses, offerings of flowers and madrigals by the time she stepped on board the chief galley of the Knights of San Stefano, where a raised dais had been prepared on the poop for the future Queen of France, with a gilt chair having the fleur de lis of France and the balls of the Medici embroidered on the back in jacinths, topazes and other precious stones. Nine years later the Grand Duke Ferdinando died, and the court retired to the Ambrogiana for the first weeks of deep mourning.

Cosimo III, decorated the villa with numerous paintings of animals and flowers by the two Scacciati and by Bartolomeo Bimbi of Settignano, which no longer exist. He seldom went there, perhaps on account of its proximity to the high road, or else because of the wind “which blows there, and will blow to all eternity,” as his doctor, the well-known poet Redi, wrote to a friend.

The last record of court festivities I can find in connection with the Ambrogiana is on April 1791, when Ferdinando III, second son of the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, who succeeded his brother as Emperor of Austria after governing Tuscany with wisdom and liberality for twenty-five years, met his bride Louisa Maria of Bourbon at the villa and escorted her to Florence.

Now the fine old villa has fallen from its high estate and is used as a prison. The forests where Ferdinando I, shot and hunted have long since been destroyed, and the picturesque little hill-village of Capraja has forgotten that her name was really Cerbaria, from the thick and wild woods surrounding the hill whence she frowns defiance at her enemy Montelupo on the opposite side of the river. Cerbaria is first mentioned in a concession by the Emperor Otho III, to the Bishop of Pistoja in 998, and again in 1155 in a diploma of Frederic II. It must have been well nigh impregnable in those days, and the narrow, steep tortuous streets, which are only practicable to mules in single file, are most picturesque. Gradually the name was changed to Capraria, then to Capraja (Capra, a goat), and when the Republic of Florence built the castle of Montelupo on the heights opposite, the proverb arose: “Per distrugger questa Capra, non vi vuol altro che un Lupo.” (To destroy this Goat, a Wolf is necessary.)

The ruined church and castle of Montelupo on the opposite side of the river is well worth a visit, and the view thence is very fine. Down by the Arno the potteries still exist where those quaint plates with straddling men at arms and wonderful purple horses, and the bocale or wide-mouthed jugs inscribed with pithy sentences, were once made. These jugs were in such common use that they gave rise to the proverb: “E scritta nei bocale di Montelupo” (It is written on the jugs of Montelupo), to indicate that a thing is of public notoriety.