The Castello di Sammezzano is the worst-kept secret in Tuscany. A three-storey building, sixty-five polychrome rooms inspired by the Alhambra of Granada and the Mughal palaces, hidden in the middle of a sixty-five-hectare park on the hills of the upper Valdarno, forty minutes by car from Florence. Absolute polychromy: emerald green, lapis-lazuli blue, vermilion red, fine gold, stucco white. No other building in Italy, and probably in Europe, condenses with such density the Moorish revival architecture of the 19th century.
Yet this jewel has been closed to the public since 1990. Three company bankruptcies, six deserted auctions between 2015 and 2024, base prices dropping from eighteen to fifteen million euros, citizen committees that have fought for over ten years to prevent the vegetation from reclaiming what the marquis Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona took forty years to build. On 28 April 2025, a turning point: the Florentine Moretti family acquires the estate through the company SMZ Srl with a settlement proposal of around eighteen million. The planned restoration is estimated between fifty and eighty million and will take years. In the meantime, visits remain suspended.
This guide retraces two hundred years of history of the abandoned castle of Sammezzano, tells who Ferdinando Panciatichi was and why he transformed a 17th-century fortress into his Eastern dream, describes the main halls one by one with their original names, traces the administrative ordeal that led the building from the luxury hotel era to the current limbo, and explains what one can really see at Sammezzano in 2026. Plus a practical section on how to reach Leccio from the centre of Florence and what to do in the surroundings.
The terms Sammezzano castle, Sammezzano palace, Sammezzano villa and the castle of Sammezzano all refer to the same building. Italian search volume is significant: 22,200 monthly searches on the main name, 3,600 on "sammezzano" and as many on "castello sammezzano", with low editorial competition. A serious, documented article that doesn't just recycle the usual five Instagram photos is still possible.
Where is the Castello di Sammezzano located
The Castello di Sammezzano rises in Località Sammezzano, a hamlet of Leccio, in the municipality of Reggello, in the province of Florence. Geographic coordinates are 43.702847 N, 11.471824 E, on the right slope of the upper Valdarno, at about four hundred metres of altitude, inside a historic park of sixty-five hectares stretching mid-slope between the Arno river and the northern foothills of the Pratomagno.
Distance from the centre of Florence is about forty kilometres following the A1 motorway (Incisa-Reggello exit), about an hour's drive on weekdays, a little more on weekends in high season. From Arezzo it is fifty kilometres in the opposite direction. The best-known commercial reference point in the area is The Mall outlet at Leccio, the large luxury shopping centre less than three kilometres from the castle, paradoxically far more visited than the historic building that should be the true tourist magnet of the valley.
Sammezzano historically belongs to the Diocese of Fiesole and the Chianti area, although geographically it belongs to the Valdarno: a border area from the identity point of view, suspended between the cultivated hills of Chianti, the chestnut woods of Pratomagno and the agricultural plain of the Arno. The microclimate is the typical southern Tuscan one, with hot summers and mild winters, conditions which allowed the marquis Panciatichi to acclimatise in the park exotic species from North America, Asia and the Middle East: including the famous giant sequoias we will discuss later.
The Ximenes d'Aragona family: from Iberian origins to Medicean Tuscany
To understand why the Sammezzano castle exists in the form we know, we must go back to the Ximenes d'Aragona family, a cadet branch of the Iberian aristocracy transplanted to Tuscany in the 16th century. Noble tradition has them descending from the sovereigns of Aragon, but documented genealogy begins with the Portuguese banker Sebastiano Ximenes, active in Florence under Cosimo I de' Medici in the mid-16th century.
The first nucleus of the Sammezzano estate was bought by the family in 1605, when Giovanni Ximenes d'Aragona bought the pre-existing villa-fortress from the previous owners, the Medici of the cadet line. The original building was a 17th-century seigniorial residence with a square plan, an angular tower, in Tuscan Mannerist style: nothing to do with the polychrome fantasmagoria we see today. The Ximenes inhabited it for two and a half centuries as a summer villa, expanding it modestly in the 18th century but without radical interventions.
History turns in 1813, the year of birth of Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona. His father, the marquis Niccolò Panciatichi, had married Marianna Ximenes d'Aragona, last heiress of the main branch of the family. At the death of the last Ximenes in 1815, after a long legal procedure concluded in 1827, young Ferdinando inherits the goods, titles, coat of arms and name of the maternal family, officially becoming Marquis Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona and owner of the Sammezzano estate. He was fourteen years old when the procedure concluded, but it would be him, as an adult, who would commit himself to the most ambitious architectural undertaking of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany of the 19th century.
Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona: the marquis who dreamed of the East
Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona (Florence, 1813, Sammezzano, 1897) is the true protagonist of the history of Sammezzano. Without him, no Eastern dream. Without his personal obsession, his family capital and his forty years of construction sites, the Moorish castle Italy boasts today would have remained an ordinary fortified villa of the Valdarno.
Aristocrat, deputy of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, then senator of the Kingdom of Italy after unification, Ferdinando was a typical figure of 19th-century Florentine nobility: cultured, well-travelled, wealthy, animated by that mixture of romanticism, orientalism and patronage ambition that characterises post-Napoleonic Europe. He had not received formal architectural training, but had accumulated in his personal library hundreds of volumes on Islamic, Mughal, Persian and Moorish architecture: the same documentation upon which, in those same years in England, the architect Owen Jones was building the Royal Pavilion in Brighton in Indo-Saracenic style.
Between 1840 and 1851, according to the reconstructions of the FPXA Committee, Ferdinando devotes about ten years to the systematic study of treatises, engravings and travel accounts on Islamic and Eastern art. He has never been to the East. He has never physically seen the Alhambra of Granada, the Taj Mahal of Agra, nor the Blue Mosque of Istanbul. His entire architectural imagination is mediated by books, by prints, by lithographs of European Romantic publishing, in particular by the volumes of Owen Jones on the Alhambra (published in London between 1842 and 1845) and by the Cahiers d'architecture orientale circulating in Paris in those same years.
From this paradox: an Orientalist who has never seen the East: the originality of Sammezzano is born. The marquis does not copy, he reinvents. He combines Mughal motifs with Persian domes, melds Moorish stucco and Byzantine majolica, adds Chinese and Indian details in free contamination. The result is a personal syncretic style, a second-hand orientalism that nonetheless possesses an aesthetic coherence and decorative richness unparalleled in the Italy of the time.
The transformation: Ferdinando's Eastern dream (1853-1889)
The transformation works that turned the 17th-century villa into the abandoned castle we know today last almost forty years, from 1853 to 1889, entirely financed with the marquis' personal patrimony. There is no unified project drawn in advance: Sammezzano is a permanent construction site, in which each new room is imagined, drawn and built as it comes, inspired by a new model drawn from the master's library.
The official start date is 1853. That year the works on the Atrium of Columns and the Dining Room are completed, with an inscription walled in place that literally reads: "this room was invented and executed by the Marquis Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona in the year of our salvation 1853". It is a revealing epigraph: the marquis attributes himself the merit of having "invented" the room, not simply commissioned it. The whole project will be presented in this same key: Sammezzano as a signature work, total manufacture of a single client-designer.
In 1862 works begin on the Stalactite Corridor (also called Sala del Nada Semper), one of the most spectacular environments of the castle: a gallery with a vault of polychrome stalactites inspired by the Nasrid mocárabes of the Alhambra. In 1864 Ferdinando buys, paying twenty-four lire, the first specimen of giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) destined for the park, imported directly from California a few years after the first botanical description of the species. In the following decades he will plant fifty-seven specimens, constituting what is still today the largest Italian collection of giant sequoias.
In the 1870s the marquis has the Octagonal Chapel, the Sala dei Pavoni, the White Room (or Ball Room) and the Room of Loves built. In 1889 the exteriors are completed: the final date is engraved in the Central Tower. The marquis is seventy-six years old and has transformed the 1605 building into a unique architectural manifesto. He dies eight years later, in 1897, leaving the estate to heirs who, already from the following generation, will have neither the means nor the passion to keep it running.
The rooms of Castello di Sammezzano: journey through sixty-five chambers
Popular legend has it that the castle of Sammezzano has three hundred and sixty-five rooms, one for every day of the year. It is a nice story told by generations of tourist guides, but it is false. The real number is about sixty-five: a tenth of the mythological figure. The inflated number probably arises from an amplification of the famous quantity of windows: the castle has dozens, spread over three floors and four wings, and in popular counting the windows became rooms and the rooms became days of the year.
That said, sixty-five all-different rooms, each decorated in a distinct style, already constitute an exceptional decorative heritage. The most important, almost all concentrated on the first noble floor, have proper names that reveal the marquis' iconographic programme: each is dedicated to a theme, to a dominant motif, to a colour. Here are the main ones, in order of decorative importance.
Sala dei Pavoni: the most photographed polychrome dome in Italy
The Sala dei Pavoni is the most famous room in the castle, and probably one of the most photographed interiors in all of 19th-century Italian art. BBC Culture magazine has included it among the most beautiful ceilings in the world. Octagonal plan, dome vault with ribs of pointed arches converging on a central rosette, polychrome decoration with peacock motifs inspired by Indian Mughal art (the peacock is the national bird of India). The chromatic range includes sapphire blue, emerald green, golden yellow, vermilion red, pearl white, distributed in concentric bands.
The effect on entering the room is that of a frozen kaleidoscope: direct light from the side windows striking the stuccoes and multiplying chromatic reflections, vertiginous perception of vertical depth that induces in visitors a reaction often described as "spiritually suspended". It is not by chance that this is the room in which Matteo Garrone set the central scene of the episode "The Deer" in his film Tale of Tales (2015), and which he reused in 2020 for the promotional short film of the Dior Cruise 2021 collection.
White Room (or Ball Room)
The White Room, also called Ball Room or Music Room, is considered the most important Moorish-style room entirely realised in Italy. Unlike the other rooms, here monochrome dominates: all the stuccoes are white, in a decorative embroidery that directly recalls the Hall of the Ambassadors of the Alhambra. Zenithal light enters from a central perforated dome, filtering through stained glass that projects onto the white and black marble floor mobile luminous geometries. It is the room where in the 1970s the receptions of the luxury hotel were held, and where even today the paving shows traces of the tables and dances of that period.
Room of Lilies
The Room of Lilies takes its name from the dominant decorative motif: the stylised lily flower, in Moorish geometric key, repeated on the walls, ceilings and entrance portal. It is a smaller room than the previous ones, of intimate proportions, decorated in pastel tones (antique pink, sea green, dim gold) that make it one of the most "welcoming" of the castle: in the sense of human, habitable. The marquis probably used it as a private parlour.
Room of Loves (or Room of Lovers)
The Room of Loves (sometimes called Room of Lovers) is dedicated to the amorous theme according to medieval Islamic iconography: motifs of hearts, doves, mirror couples, in a decoration that explicitly cites Safavid Persian miniatures and Mughal palaces. Coloured stained glass filters the outside light in red and golden tones, accentuating the intimate character of the space.
Atrium of Columns (or Hall of Columns)
The Atrium of Columns is one of the oldest environments of the new 19th-century construction: completed in 1853, as the walled epigraph recalls. It is a longitudinal room with two rows of Moorish columns with composite stalactite capitals, supporting horseshoe arches. The polychrome decoration covers every surface, from the bases of the columns to the vaults, in a horror vacui that leaves the visitor without visual resting points. It functioned as an official reception hall for the arrival of guests.
Stalactite Corridor (Sala del Nada Semper)
The Stalactite Corridor, officially Sala del Nada Semper (from the heraldic motto engraved above the mihrab), is a narrow and long gallery whose vault is entirely covered with polychrome stalactites in stucco, faithful replica of the mocárabes of the Alhambra of Granada. At the end of the corridor is a decorated mihrab that imitates the prayer niche of mosques, although at Sammezzano it had no religious function: it was pure aesthetic citation. Works begin in 1862.
Smoking Room (or Fumoir Octagon)
The Fumoir Octagon is the room reserved for men to smoke cigars after dinner, according to 19th-century bourgeois etiquette. Octagonal plan, dome covering, golden stuccoes on cobalt blue background, coloured stained glass. Its restrained dimension and its discreet location compared to the reception part made it an environment of exclusive male sociability, according to the canons of 19th-century aristocracy.
Other notable rooms
Among the sixty-five rooms, also deserving mention are the Turquoise Room (turquoise majolica decorations inspired by Ottoman art), the Room of Virtus in Medio (with historiated stained glass giving its name to the room), the Room of Nodum Solve (gallery of vases with decorated ceilings), the Pax-Libertas Room (with frescoed vault bearing the heraldic motto) and the Octagonal Chapel with its decorated dome, the only actual religious environment of the castle, privately dedicated to the Panciatichi family.
The Moorish inspiration: Alhambra, Thousand and One Nights, Orientalism
The Moorish revival architecture of Sammezzano fits into a 19th-century European cultural current called Orientalism, which from the 1830s crosses painting (Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Léon Gérôme), literature (Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, Gustave Flaubert), music (the Scheherazade of Rimsky-Korsakov), interior design and architecture.
In architecture, Moorish revival produces throughout Europe a series of hybrid buildings: the Royal Pavilion in Brighton (John Nash, 1815-1822), the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest (Ludwig Förster, 1854-1859), the Linderhof Castle of Ludwig II of Bavaria with its "Moorish House" (1876-1878), the Synagogue of Victory in Turin designed by Enrico Petiti, the Villa Moresca in Èze on the French Riviera. But none of these buildings reaches the decorative extension nor the syncretic density of Sammezzano. The marquis Panciatichi did not limit himself to one or two thematic environments: he transformed an entire castle, room by room, into a visual encyclopaedia of orientalism.
The main model, as we have said, is the Alhambra of Granada. The Nasrid residence of the 14th century had been "rediscovered" by European orientalism in the first decades of the 19th century, thanks to the drawings of the British architect Owen Jones (published in the volumes Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra of 1842-1845). Sammezzano takes from the Alhambra not only the mocárabes and horseshoe arches, but also the spatial logic: sequences of rooms opening onto each other without a dominant perspective axis, central voids with zenithal light, "tapestry" decoration that covers every surface without pause.
But unlike the Alhambra: which is a collective work of three centuries of Nasrid sovereigns: Sammezzano is the work of one single man, in a single lifespan. Forty years of uninterrupted construction, a single client who is also designer and director of the site. From this point of view, paradoxically, Sammezzano is more stylistically coherent than the Alhambra: everything responds to a single vision, even when decorative influences change from room to room. It is a total work of a single author, and this makes it a unique case in the history of European orientalism.
The influence of the tales of Thousand and One Nights is equally important. The marquis had in his library the Italian and French editions of the collection, and many of his iconographic choices: the labyrinth, the mirror, the secret garden, the starred dome: directly recall the fairy-tale imagery of the Arabian Nights. Sammezzano is in this sense also a literary construction, a book-building in which each room tells a chapter of a dreamed epic.
From luxury hotel to abandonment (1955-1990)
At the death of the marquis Ferdinando in 1897, the estate of Sammezzano passes to the descendants of the Panciatichi, who keep it in the family for the first half of the 20th century without significant interventions. In the first decades of the 20th century, the castle enters a period of occasional use as a summer residence, while the structure shows the first signs of degradation due to lack of systematic maintenance.
In 1955 the family decides to sell. The castle is bought by a private company that converts it in the 1960s-1970s into a luxury hotel with restaurant, spa, golf course and country club. It is the most "bourgeois" period of Sammezzano's history: the castle hosts weddings of the high Florentine bourgeoisie, corporate receptions, international guests seeking an orientalising experience without having to go to Morocco. The historical rooms are largely left intact (fortunately: they were their main attraction), while the lower floors and outbuildings are adapted to hotel functions: industrial kitchens, serial bathrooms, suites carved out of the original rooms.
In those same years a planning choice is also made that will be the subject of controversy for decades: the construction, next to the historic castle, of a massive reinforced concrete building of about nine thousand square metres, thought of as a hotel extension and never actually used. The concrete volume, still visible today, has disfigured the landscape of the estate and will be one of the first interventions planned by the Moretti family in the 2025 restoration plan: its integral demolition.
The luxury hotel closes its doors in 1990, officially for "lack of profitability", in reality for the inability of the owning company to bear the growing costs of maintaining a historic building of such complexity. From 1990 the castle enters a state of official abandonment, guarded by a small team of caretakers but without any activity open to the public anymore. The rooms are sealed, the hotel furnishings are dismantled and partly sold, the systems decommissioned.
In 1999 the property passes to an Italian-British company, Sammezzano Castle Srl, which announces a major project of conversion into a six-star luxury resort, with investors from the Persian Gulf. For almost twenty years the projects will succeed each other in the pages of local newspapers without ever materialising. The reality of the site is one: nothing. No significant structural work, no securing, no restoration. Only the wear of time, water infiltration from the roofs, broken windows, stuccoes beginning to give way in some rooms on the first floor.
The failed auctions: the administrative ordeal (2015-2024)
On 18 December 2017 the Court of Arezzo, bankruptcy section, declared the bankruptcy of the company Sammezzano Castle Srl with judgement number 84/2017 and put the castle up for auction with a starting price of eighteen million euros. It is the beginning of an administrative ordeal lasting seven years, marked by six consecutive deserted auctions and a progressive reduction in the base price.
| Auction date | Base price | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| October 2018 | 16.2 million € | Deserted |
| February 2019 | 15.7 million € | Deserted |
| April 2019 | 15.7 million € | Deserted |
| 2020 (Covid suspended) | , | Postponed |
| 2021-2022 | 15-12 million € | Deserted |
| 2024 | further reduction | Deserted |
In November 2019 the first bankruptcy procedure is closed without outcome. The castle remains in the hands of the bankruptcy curator but without concrete prospects of sale. Meanwhile, the conditions of the noble floor worsen: some infiltrations in the ceilings of the less important rooms, presence of mould in some minor environments, partial detachments of stuccoes in the galleries most exposed to humidity. The main rooms (Sala dei Pavoni, White Room, Atrium of Columns, Room of Lilies) fortunately remain in good conservation condition, thanks to the quality of the original materials and the hermetic closure of the windows.
On 12 January 2023 a new insolvency procedure opens with judgement number 1/2023 of Judge Federico Pani of the Court of Arezzo, which orders the judicial liquidation of Sammezzano Castle Srl. A new phase of the ordeal begins, with further auctions succeeding without outcome until 2024. Meanwhile, in the national newspapers the appeals of the FPXA Committee, of Save Sammezzano, of intellectuals and academics asking the Italian State to intervene directly multiply: to nationalise the building, transform it into a museum, stop the deterioration.
The turning point arrives on 28 April 2025. The company SMZ Srl, controlled by the holding HKC Srl of the Florentine Moretti family, presents a settlement proposal of about eighteen million euros which is accepted by the court. The young Ginevra Moretti, daughter of entrepreneur Giorgio Moretti, leads the new company. The family announces an overall investment plan between fifty and eighty million euros for complete restoration and reopening to the public, with mixed destination: luxury hotel, visitable museum area, open historic park, demolition of the 1970s concrete volume.
The property's message is clear: the restoration will last several years, public visits are suspended indefinitely pending securing. Full opening is foreseen no earlier than 2028-2030, according to the first unofficial estimates.
The salvage committees: FPXA and Save Sammezzano
Without the constant pressure of two citizen committees that for over ten years have fought for the protection of Sammezzano, it is likely that the castle would today be in much worse condition. It is worth recalling their story.
The FPXA Committee - 1813-2013 was born in 2012 in Reggello on the initiative of a group of local citizens to celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona (1813-2013). The committee immediately launches a series of extraordinary openings of the castle, in collaboration with the then ownership, which allow the public to visit the building on limited occasions during the year. It is these openings, between 2012 and 2015, that put Sammezzano back on the map of Italian cultural tourism. Images of the visits circulate massively on social networks, and digital word-of-mouth transforms Sammezzano from a niche secret of architecture enthusiasts into an international viral phenomenon.
Save Sammezzano is a second committee, born in September 2015 after the first judicial auction, with the declared objective of "raising awareness among citizens and institutions of the artistic and monumental importance of Sammezzano" and preventing the definitive closure of the building. The movement is based in Florence but operates nationally, with an informative website (savesammezzano.com) which is today the most up-to-date source on the state of the castle.
The two organisations have operated in parallel, with some tactical divergences but with the same underlying mission. Among their most visible successes: the second place of the Castello di Sammezzano in the tenth Census I Luoghi del Cuore FAI - Intesa Sanpaolo, reached thanks to a campaign of online and paper signature collection organised in collaboration with the Municipality of Reggello. The recognition brought resources and media visibility useful for putting pressure on institutions during the most difficult years of the administrative ordeal.
With the arrival of the Moretti family in 2025, the role of the committees changes: no longer bulwarks against abandonment, but critical interlocutors of the new owner, attentive to verifying that the restoration maintains the declared commitments to at least partial public accessibility (museum area + historic park).
Sammezzano in cinema and fashion
The aesthetics of Sammezzano are too powerful not to have been exploited by cinema and fashion. The castle's appearances on screen begin in the 1960s, during the luxury hotel period, and continue to this day: the most recent and famous case is the Dior short film signed by Matteo Garrone in 2020.
Cinema:
- ●Arabian Nights by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1974), which uses some interiors of the castle as a set for the oriental episode of the trilogy.
- ●Sono un ESP by Sergio Corbucci (1973), comedy with Adriano Celentano.
- ●Tale of Tales - Il racconto dei racconti by Matteo Garrone (2015), the most important film shot in Sammezzano. The interiors of the Selvascura palace (episode "The Deer") are almost entirely shot in the rooms of the first floor of the castle, particularly in the Sala dei Pavoni and the Stalactite Corridor. The photography of Peter Suschitzky transforms Sammezzano into a timeless fairy-tale set.
Fashion:
- ●Promotional short film Dior Cruise 2021: directed by Matteo Garrone, set in the castle of Sammezzano, dedicated to the Major Arcana as a tribute to the maison's founder Maria Grazia Chiuri. It is the project that more than any other has amplified Sammezzano's aesthetic at an international level in recent years, with millions of online views and diffusion in the global lifestyle press.
- ●Various photo shoots for the magazines Vogue Italia, Harper's Bazaar, W Magazine in the period 2015-2019, when the castle was still occasionally openable for film productions.
Documentaries and television:
- ●Bell'Italia (RAI 3, 2014), report dedicated to orientalist architectural heritage in Italy.
- ●Sereno Variabile (RAI 2, 2016), episode on Reggello and the Valdarno.
- ●Sky Arte produced in 2018 a documentary dedicated to orientalism in 19th-century Italian architecture, with Sammezzano as the central case.
The indirect economic effect of these appearances is considerable. Although closed to the public, the castle of Sammezzano generates tourist research in the region: visitors to The Mall outlet of Leccio often push as far as the historic park to photograph the exterior, architecture enthusiasts organise ad hoc trips from all over Europe in the hope of an extraordinary visit, the agencies organising weddings and photo shoots have built around Sammezzano a small service induced industry (location scouting, photographers, organisers) despite official inaccessibility.
Can you visit the Castello di Sammezzano in 2026?
The answer in May 2026 is clear and must be said immediately: no, it is not possible to visit the interior of the castle. No openings scheduled for 2026, no official date for 2027. The Moretti family, new owner since 28 April 2025, has publicly declared that visits will only resume after the completion of structural securing and a significant part of the restoration, estimated at several years of work.
What you can really see
What remains accessible is the historic park of the estate, extending over sixty-five hectares of hills as a romantic English garden. Access to the park is in some periods allowed for organised guided trekking, particularly by local groups specialised in nature excursions to the monumental group of giant sequoias: fifty-seven adult specimens exceeding thirty-five metres in height, including the famous "twin sequoia", a monumental tree over fifty metres high and with a circumference of more than eight metres, candidate a few years ago for the title of European Tree of the Year.
Guided excursions to the park of Sammezzano are organised sporadically by associations such as Andareazonzo, by qualified environmental guides of the Valdarno or by municipal initiatives of the Municipality of Reggello. The frequency is not regular and depends on the availability of the property: it is advisable to consult the sites savesammezzano.com, sammezzano.info and the social channels of the Municipality of Reggello for updates.
The ex-FAI openings
During the years of abandonment (2012-2024), the FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano occasionally organised extraordinary openings of the castle during the FAI Spring and Autumn Days. The openings were interrupted after the last ones in the Covid period and there are no official indications of new initiatives planned for 2026. When FAI visits were active, places were exhausted within hours of the opening of online reservations on giornatefai.it, proof of the very strong public interest.
Legal status and unauthorised access
Unauthorised access to the property of Sammezzano constitutes a violation of private property under the Italian Civil Code. The estate is fenced, watched by dedicated personnel, and there is no possibility of entering in a "discreet" manner without authorisation. In recent years there have been some cases of urbexers who attempted unauthorised access: all have been identified and reported. In the eras when the castle was effectively abandoned (1995-2015 approximately), some attempts succeeded: today, with the presence of the new ownership and the securing sites, illegal access is practically impossible and strongly discouraged.
For those seeking a comparable experience in Moorish revival style legally visitable in Italy, alternatives include the Castello di Miramare in Trieste (for the oriental rooms) and Villa Sciarra in Rome (for the gardens). For the more extreme orientalisms, the European reference remains the Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi near Turin, although Baroque in style and not Moorish. To discover other abandoned Italian places of monumental value, we recommend our pillar article dedicated to abandoned places of Italy, which places Sammezzano in the context of the national heritage of buildings awaiting restoration.
How to get to the Castello di Sammezzano
For those who want to approach the Sammezzano estate from the external side (perimeter park and panoramic view of the building), here is the summary of available means of transport from Florence and Arezzo.
| From | Means | Duration | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Florence SMN | Car via A1 (Incisa-Reggello exit) | 50 min | 5-7 € toll + fuel |
| Florence SMN | Regional train to Rignano sull'Arno + taxi | 60 min | 5 € train + 15-20 € taxi |
| Arezzo | Car via A1 (Incisa-Reggello exit) | 45 min | 5-7 € toll + fuel |
| Rome | Car via A1 | 2h45 | 25 € toll + fuel |
| Bologna | Car via A1 | 1h45 | 18 € toll + fuel |
| Florence | Organised tour (sequoias + The Mall) | 4-6h | 60-90 €/person |
Practical indications:
- ●The recommended A1 motorway exit is Incisa-Reggello. From there one continues on the provincial road to Leccio (about eight kilometres) and from Leccio one takes the tree-lined avenue leading towards the castle.
- ●The official car park for visitors is located at the entrance of the park in Leccio. From there one continues on foot in gentle ascent for ten to twenty minutes approximately up to the panoramic view of the building.
- ●Public transport is practically non-existent. The local bus line connecting the station of Rignano sull'Arno to Reggello passes far from Leccio and is not practicable for tourism.
- ●For those travelling by train from Florence, the nearest station is Rignano sull'Arno (Florence-Arezzo line), reached with Trenitalia regional trains. From Rignano a taxi is necessary to reach Leccio (about fifteen kilometres, twenty-minute journey).
- ●The Mall outlet of Leccio is three kilometres from the castle: many visitors organise a combined shopping + external visit to the park of Sammezzano day.
For nature hikers, there are several trekking trails crossing the perimeter park of Sammezzano, some of which allow approaching the castle to within a few hundred metres. The best-known trail is that of the giant sequoias, organised sporadically with a qualified environmental guide by the Andareazonzo group.
What to do near Sammezzano
The area of Leccio-Reggello is in a strategic position to explore some of the most representative places of Florentine Tuscany. A typical day dedicated to Sammezzano can be combined with other cultural and gastronomic stops of quality within a thirty-kilometre radius.
Ten minutes by car from Leccio is the Pieve di San Pietro a Cascia, a splendid 12th-century Romanesque church housing the San Giovenale Triptych by Masaccio (1422), one of the master's earliest known works. It is a visit less famous than the official circuits of Florence but of very high artistic value.
Also in the vicinity, the Vallombrosa Abbey is reachable in half an hour via the panoramic roads of the Pratomagno. Founded in 1036 by Vallombrosan Benedictine monks, it is immersed in a large silver fir forest which supplied the wood for the scaffolding of Brunelleschi's dome in Florence. The combined Sammezzano-Vallombrosa visit is a classic half-day itinerary for those coming from the Valdarno.
For the food and wine dimension, the Arezzo Chianti area begins a few hills further south, with wineries to visit in Mercatale Valdarno, Bucine and Cavriglia. The historic trattorias of the upper Valdarno (particularly in Reggello, Pian di Scò and Loro Ciuffenna) offer traditional Tuscan cuisine: ribollita, pici with wild boar, schiacciata with grapes in the harvest months.
Thirty kilometres to the north-west one enters the tourist circuit of Florence: the Sammezzano + Florence combination in two days is a formula appreciated by international visitors, who often stay in an agritourism in the Valdarno and use the regional train for the Florentine day. For those who instead want to continue the exploration of the regional abandoned heritage, we recommend our article dedicated to urbex explorations in Tuscany and the in-depth on abandoned places of Italy which puts Sammezzano in perspective with the great spots of the peninsula.
FAQ: frequently asked questions about Castello di Sammezzano
Can you visit Castello di Sammezzano in 2026?
No, it is currently not possible to visit the interior of the castle. The new ownership, the company SMZ Srl of the Moretti family which took over on 28 April 2025, has suspended all public access pending the completion of securing and restoration works. The external historic park is occasionally visitable through guided trekking organised by local associations. Full opening to the public is foreseen no earlier than 2028-2030.
How much does it cost to visit Castello di Sammezzano?
At the moment no ticket is available for visits inside the castle. When FAI organised the extraordinary openings between 2015 and 2020, the price was about 15-20 euros per person, with mandatory online reservation on giornatefai.it. Sequoia park visits organised by qualified environmental guides cost on average 15-25 euros per person.
How many rooms does Castello di Sammezzano really have?
Popular legend speaks of 365 rooms, one for each day of the year. The reality is that the castle contains about 65 rooms, each decorated differently. The most well-known and photographed are the fifteen rooms of the first noble floor, including the Sala dei Pavoni, the White Room, the Room of Lilies, the Room of Loves, the Atrium of Columns and the Stalactite Corridor.
Who was Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona?
Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona (Florence, 1813 - Sammezzano, 1897) was a Florentine marquis, deputy of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and then senator of the Kingdom of Italy. He inherited the Sammezzano estate from his mother's Ximenes d'Aragona family, and between 1853 and 1889 transformed the pre-existing 17th-century villa into the Moorish castle Italy boasts today, working almost forty years on the personal decoration of 65 rooms inspired by the Alhambra of Granada and oriental art.
Why is Castello di Sammezzano abandoned?
The castle has been closed to the public since 1990, when the luxury hotel that managed it ceased activity for lack of profitability. From 1999 the property passed to the company Sammezzano Castle Srl, which went bankrupt a first time in 2017 and a second time in 2023 without managing to carry out the restoration project. Six consecutive auctions between 2018 and 2024 went deserted, until the purchase by the Moretti family in April 2025.
Who bought Castello di Sammezzano?
On 28 April 2025 the estate was acquired by the company SMZ Srl, entirely controlled by the holding HKC Srl of the Florentine Moretti family. Leading the company is Ginevra Moretti, daughter of entrepreneur Giorgio Moretti. The initial investment was about eighteen million euros, with an overall restoration plan estimated between fifty and eighty million euros spread over several years of work.
Which films were shot in Castello di Sammezzano?
The most important films shot in Sammezzano are Arabian Nights by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1974), Sono un ESP by Sergio Corbucci (1973) and especially Tale of Tales - Il racconto dei racconti by Matteo Garrone (2015), which uses the rooms of the first noble floor as a set for the episode "The Deer". In 2020 Garrone reused the castle for a promotional short film of the Dior Cruise 2021 collection, dedicated to the Major Arcana.
How big is the park of Castello di Sammezzano?
The historic park measures about 65 hectares of hills designed as a romantic English garden, with exotic species introduced by the marquis Panciatichi starting from 1864. The park hosts the largest Italian collection of giant sequoias, with fifty-seven adult specimens exceeding thirty-five metres in height, including the famous "twin sequoia" over fifty metres high.
Is Castello di Sammezzano inspired by the Alhambra of Granada?
Yes, the main inspiration is the Alhambra of Granada, Nasrid residence of the 14th century. The marquis Panciatichi never physically visited the Alhambra, but studied the volumes of the British architect Owen Jones published in London between 1842 and 1845. To this main inspiration he added Indian Mughal, Persian, Ottoman and Byzantine elements, in a syncretic synthesis that makes Sammezzano a unique case in the panorama of 19th-century European orientalism.
Are there official guided tours at Castello di Sammezzano?
At the moment, no. No official guided tour inside the castle is available in 2026. There are, however, guided trekking in the historic park organised sporadically by associations such as Andareazonzo, and hiking visits to the group of giant sequoias with qualified environmental guide. For updates on possible future openings, the references are the sites savesammezzano.com, sammezzano.info and the official channels of the Municipality of Reggello.
Conclusion: the future of Sammezzano
The castle of Sammezzano is a case without equal in the history of Italian architecture. A building born from the personal dream of a single 19th-century aristocrat, built room by room with the same artisanal effort as a Gothic cathedral, abandoned for almost forty years due to a series of entrepreneurial incapacities and a slow judicial system, finally entrusted since 2025 to an ownership that has the economic resources to think of a comprehensive restoration. The future of Sammezzano depends on the next five or ten years: whether the Moretti family's plan will hold, whether the Superintendence will effectively oversee the quality of the restoration, whether public openings will effectively be guaranteed as promised.
For those who love orientalist architecture, Sammezzano is a mandatory stop on their European itinerary, alongside the Royal Pavilion of Brighton, the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest and the pavilions of Bavarian Linderhof. For those who love Tuscany, it is a surprising counter-melody to the Florentine Renaissance canon: a recall to a cosmopolitan, travelling, dreaming-of-distant-worlds 19th-century Tuscany. For those involved in heritage protection, it is an exemplary case of how civic vigilance (FPXA and Save Sammezzano committees) can make the difference between the ruin and the salvation of a monument.
In the meantime, while waiting for the doors to reopen, we content ourselves with the perimeter park, sequoia excursions, Garrone's images, archive photographs. And with the awareness that, forty minutes by car from Florence, exists an abandoned castle that tells an Italian story different from the one we are used to imagining. To explore other abandoned places of Italian heritage, consult our interactive map of abandoned places in Italy (over twenty thousand spots censused), our pillar article on the most iconic abandoned places and our in-depth dedicated to Tuscany. To discover other personalised urbex spots and access exclusive GPS coordinates, visit our interactive map.
Happy exploring, from the Valdarno and beyond.
