Brief History of the Torre

Did Dante, Giotto and Boccaccio came for lunch?

We know these artists were all friends and contemporaries of the Peruzzi patrons.

Giotto was commissioned the cappella Peruzzi in Santa croce. Boccaccio mentions the Peruzzi’s in his Decameron.

Could the wealthy bankers have thrown a pic-nic and invited some friends over? After all choices in those days were limited. They had their palazzo in Florence and this borgo half a day’s horse ride away.

Dante leads to Chaucer. Giotto, leads to Masaccio... Could this venue have been the cradle of the Renaissance?

The property was originally built as a watch- tower

set on the advantageously positioned hills 10 kilometres from Florence, on the pilgrims’ route to Rome, at the same time that Henry III was rebuilding Westminster Abbey.

It would have originally been a tower of probably five or six storeys, with a fortified courtyard with battlements and arrow slits.