The Medici liked to hunt, and Ferdinando I wanted somewhere to do it. In the late sixteenth century the grand duke commissioned the architect Bernardo Buontalenti to build him a hunting lodge on the hill of Artimino, west of Florence, and the result was a large, plain and strangely beautiful villa with a loggia, a terrace and a forest of chimneys. It is nicknamed the villa of the hundred chimneys, though there are fewer than that, and the stacks along the roofline give the building a rhythm that you can recognise from a long way off. It is one of the Medici villas and gardens that UNESCO listed in 2013 for the way they shaped the Italian idea of a country house.
The setting is the Montalbano, a low range of wooded hills covered with olive terraces, vineyards and cypress. The wine here, Carmignano, is one of the oldest named in Italy, and local tradition says that Catherine de' Medici brought Cabernet vines from France, and the red is still blended with that grape. Below the villa lies Comeana, with a big Etruscan tumulus, one of several burial mounds in the area that show that the hills were important long before the Medici. A small Etruscan museum in the village of Artimino adds context.
The riding is gentle and lovely. The lanes climb through olive groves in tight bends, with stone walls, cypress avenues and views down to the plain, and the surface varies from smooth to patched. In spring the hillsides are green and the poppies are out, and in autumn the vines turn red and the olive harvest begins. Traffic is light on the hill roads, though tour buses visit the villa on some days. Mornings are the best time.
Poggio a Caiano, three kilometres away, has another Medici villa, designed for Lorenzo the Magnificent, and enough shops and fuel to be useful, while Florence lies twenty-odd kilometres to the east. For lunch, order a plate of local ham, ribollita bean soup or a steak, and a glass of Carmignano if you are not riding. The walk around the villa terrace, with its view over the plain, is a good way to finish.