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Villa Belvedere - Pisa in Tuscany

The villa was restored on the pre-existing 16th-century dwelling-place of the Del Carretto family; the restoration work began in 1771 by order of Count Del Testa Del Tignoso. Later, the oratory and the parsonage were built. The villa consists of different buildings designed by the architect Tarocchi and works by the painter G.B. Tempesti: the villa (the noble’s residence), the parsonage (the abbot’s residence), the oratory (place of prayer open to the public), the cellar, the stable, the bathroom (spa, lemon-house), the coffee house (meeting-place), the gazebo (panoramic view in the wood), the village (farmers’ houses).

The Belvedere complex has no fence, nor access gate, while the other villas are generally fenced in and closed and perfectly delimit the border by separating the people from the lord, like, for example, in the villas of Lucca or in those on the Pisan Mountains. The interior houses an ornamental fresco by Tempesti, Melani and Tarocchi. In the past, the fossils coming from the adjacent hills and then the armours of the Gioco del Ponte di Pisa, over which the Testa family frequently had control, were gathered in the villa. In the eastern portion of the English-style park is a small porch with a bathtub and a marble Venus (to be found also in the Lanfranchi garden of Via S. Marta in Pisa), bought by the family in 1774 and wrongly attributed to Michelangelo. The oratory is dedicated to Santa Maria and S. Ranieri and belongs, together with the near church, to the Bishop’s Court of San Miniato.

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