Medieval Vinci

Vinci sits on a spur of the Montalbano hills between Florence and Pisa, about 40 km west of Florence, among olive groves and vineyards. The town grew around the castle of the Conti Guidi, the feudal family that held much of the Tuscan countryside in the 11th and 12th centuries; its almond-shaped walled core, nicknamed the ‘castello a forma di mandorla’, still encloses the keep, the church of Santa Croce and a few lanes. Vinci passed under the control of the Republic of Florence in 1254 and remained a Florentine country town thereafter.

Its fame is one man. Leonardo was born on 15 April 1452 in the hamlet of Anchiano, 3 km above the town, where his birthplace is a small museum, and was baptised in Santa Croce. Since 1953 the Castello dei Conti Guidi has housed the Museo Leonardiano, with models of his machines built from the notebooks, and the Biblioteca Leonardiana holds facsimiles of all his manuscripts. The keep’s roof terrace looks over the Arno valley to the Apennines.

Every July the walled centre becomes the Festa dell’Unicorno, Italy’s largest fantasy festival, founded in 2005, which divides the town into themed worlds from a medieval citadel to steampunk and cosplay. Vinci has no railway station; Empoli, 10 km south on the Florence–Pisa line, is the nearest, with buses up to the town.