Jardin de Pratolino and Villa de Artimino

Scenic road chapters

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Jardin de Pratolino

   Pratolino is a hill north of Florence where, in the 1570s, Francesco I de' Medici decided to build a pleasure ground that would amaze Europe. He commissioned Bernardo Buontalenti, an architect, engineer and theatre designer, and the result was a park of grottoes, fountains, water-powered automata and hidden jets, which wrecked visitors' clothes and delighted them in equal measure. The great survivor is the Appennine, a gigantic statue by Giambologna, about ten metres high, crouched beside a pond, a stone giant with caves inside his body and a face emerging from rock and moss. It is one of the strangest and most impressive garden sculptures in Italy.

   Read the complete Jardin de Pratolino write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Jardin de Pratolino is where the day begins. Next is Villa du Poggio Imperiale.

2. 2. Villa du Poggio Imperiale

   Poggio Imperiale announces itself with an avenue, a long, straight, cypress-lined approach running up from Porta Romana in Florence, with statues in niches and the villa waiting at the top like the end of a sentence. It began as a Medici property in the sixteenth century, but its grand form came in the 1620s, when Maria Maddalena of Austria, wife of Cosimo II, enlarged it and gave it the name Imperiale in a nod to her Habsburg origins. The cool neoclassical front you see today was added in the early nineteenth century under Napoleonic rule.

   Read the complete Villa du Poggio Imperiale write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Villa du Poggio Imperiale comes up about 17 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa de Artimino.

3. 3. Villa de Artimino

   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.

   Read the complete Villa de Artimino write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 41 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa de Artimino. Next is back through Villa du Poggio Imperiale.

4. 4. back through Villa du Poggio Imperiale

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Villa du Poggio Imperiale write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Villa du Poggio Imperiale, late in the day. Next is Jardin de Pratolino.

5. 5. Jardin de Pratolino

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Jardin de Pratolino write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Jardin de Pratolino. That is the ride.