In 1968, the villa was donated to the Italian State by Galliano Boldrini; incorporated in 2006 into the Special Superintendency for the Florentine Museum Complex, the villa has housed since the late Eighties a storage of archaeological finds from the Archaeological Superintendency of Tuscany, originally placed in the rooms of Palazzo della Crocetta, from where they were removed following the renovation of the museum route after the 1966 flood.
The structure was subject to a restoration campaign directed by the Superintendency for Environmental and Architectural Heritage of Florence, started in 2000 with the large hall and the inner courtyard. Thanks to the constant contribution of the Florence Savings Bank Foundation, the recovery project of the ancient baroque complex finally concluded in 2010, with the refurbishment of the facade and much of the interior spaces.
In the hall, some of the most significant marbles from the collection of the Archaeological Museum have been placed, including the porphyry statue of the Emperor Hadrian, unique of its kind, and that of the Peplophoros from Palazzo Cepparello, a splendid Roman replica of a Greek original from the 5th century BC.
Along the walls of the courtyard, numerous Etruscan sarcophagi in nenfro from Tuscania have found a place, coming from the family tomb of the Statlans, dating from the late 4th to the 2nd century BC, as well as a very fine female sarcophagus from Tarquinia, decorated in bas-relief with figurative scenes full of symbolic meanings that allude to rites and salvific cults.
In other ground floor rooms, part of the lavish decoration of ancient marbles once in the “Storeroom of Inscriptions” of the Uffizi, set up by Foggini for Cosimo III as a majestic entrance to the Gallery and dismantled by 1920, after various installation phases, has been recovered.
On the first floor, the visitor can instead retrace the millenary history of the Florentine plain through a permanent exhibition of finds discovered in the territory. Among them stand out the remains of the equipment from the “Tomb of the Mule” (end of the 7th century BC) and funerary sculptures from archaic Fiesolan workshops, including the exceptional “Settimello Stele” (mid-6th century BC). It is important to note that the exhibition also includes finds from the Etruscan city of Gonfienti, discovered over ten years ago not far from Calenzano.
The exhibition aims not so much at creating a museum setup in the traditional sense of the term, but at restoring visibility to works preserved in this villa, which for years has served as a storage for the stone materials of the National Archaeological Museum of Florence.
OPENING HOURS
From April to September:
1st-3rd Friday and every Saturday of each month from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm
2nd and 4th Sunday of each month from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm
From October to March:
2nd and 4th Sunday of each month from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm
Villa Corsini a Castello
Via della Petraia, 38 50141 Florence
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