News About the Medici Villa - 6
Following the Leone X Award with the acquisition of upper Versilia by the Florentines, Cosimo I de’ Medici, between 1561 and 1565, had a fortress-palace built on the left bank of the Vezza river to make it his temporary residence for frequent visits to the silver mines and marble quarries in the area. With its simple, almost austere architecture, perhaps designed by Bernardo Buontalenti, the palace stands in front of a large lawn, in the internal courtyard there is a light loggia with three openings in white marble and a well on whose architrave there is a marble trout in memory of an exceptional catch made by the Grand Duchess Cristina in 1603. The palace was for many years the summer residence of the Medici, the Habsburg-Lorraine and their noble guests.
Next to the Palace, in the large lawn now named after Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici, there is a Chapel, now deconsecrated, built at the time of the Grand Duchess Maria Cristina in 1609. At the back of the palace there was the Fruit Garden in the Medici era with orange, mulberry, cherry, lemon and flowers. At the end of the lawn there were the stables that at the end of the 17th century were transformed into warehouses for the Magone ironworks and at the end of the following century into a theatre: the Teatro dei Costanti, still today the building is a theatre and cinema venue.
With the birth of the Kingdom of Italy, the Palace became the seat of the Town Hall and remained so until 1967. Since 1982, the Palazzo Mediceo has been home to important exhibitions of modern and contemporary art. Its rooms on the ground floor also house the “Sirio Giannini” Municipal Library and the pre-unification and post-unification Municipal Historical Archives, where the works of Alfredo Catarsini in the Seravezzo stage are exhibited.
On the upper floors, the Museum of Work and Popular Traditions of Historic Versilia was inaugurated in 1996 with over two thousand objects that refer precisely to the economic and traditional activities of Historic Versilia.
The Palace is part of the UNESCO World Heritage List of Cultural and Natural Heritage.