Medieval Castle Estate in the Mugello

A fortified tower in the 11th century, a villa by the 17th, and taking guests now. On the Mugello hills above Barberino, a 62-hectare estate around a medieval castle, running today as accommodation. Nearly a thousand years of continuous use, and 5,314 m² of floor area. The castle itself is 2,587 m² of stone on the hilltop. It began in the 11th century, probably as a fortified tower, and grew into a control point for the Mugello. Florence took it in the 13th century, and a document of 1269 describes a palazzo with a tower and thirteen houses set along the walls. Its military life ended in the late 14th century without much incident. By a census of the mid-17th it is described as a villa rather than a castle, the point at which it had become a country house. Families came and went, each renovating, none much altering it. Between 1915 and 1917 the architect Agenore Socini restored the castle and laid out the Italian garden of 6,600 m² down the south slope, which is what you see below the walls today. Sixty bedrooms and forty bathrooms across the estate, and a swimming pool. Florence is fifty minutes and its airport forty. The castle accounts for 2,587 of the 5,314 m²; the rest sits in further buildings the agency has not itemised publicly. Ask us for the full schedule, and for which businesses and licences are included, at sixty bedrooms that is the substance of the deal.