Scarperia

A Florentine foundation in the green folds of the Mugello, Scarperia pairs a fortress-palace of the Republic’s vicars with a living tradition of knife making seven centuries old. Around it lie Medici villas and fortresses, a Franciscan convent with a Donatello crucifix and the dig site of the Ubaldini castle that once ruled these hills.

Why visit

Scarperia is the Mugello’s town of makers. Founded in 1306 by the Republic of Florence on land it had just wrested from feudal lords, it was designed as a “terra nuova” — a planted new town — and given a palace from which Florentine vicars administered a wide swathe of the countryside. That civic skeleton is intact around the arcaded Piazza dei Vicari, and inside the old palace the town keeps one of Tuscany’s most unusual museums: an entire institution devoted to blades, celebrating the knife-smiths of Scarperia whose craft dates to the town’s very founding.

Visitors come here for three intertwined pleasures. The first is craftsmanship — blades forged and sharpened in workshops that still trade on a seven-hundred-year reputation, documented in the Museum of Cutting Blades. The second is the Medici Mugello: Cosimo the Elder’s fortified villa at Il Trebbio and his descendants’ great Fortress of San Martino stand minutes away, monuments to the dynasty’s homeland. The third is the layered, quieter history beneath both — the hill of Montaccianico, where the Ubaldini family’s principal castle dominated until the Florentine conquest, now an open-air archaeological dig.

Character and history

Scarperia’s story begins as an instrument of statecraft. The Ubaldini counts, feudal masters of the central Apennine margins, held their strongest castle at Montaccianico; when Florence broke that power in the early fourteenth century it planted Castel San Barnaba — today’s Scarperia — on the defeated territory, one of several new towns built to secure the Mugello. From the fifteenth century the town became the seat of the Vicar, a Florentine official holding civil and criminal jurisdiction over much of the Mugello, and the Palace of the Vicars became both courthouse and fortress. The Medici, alert to the office’s value, kept friendly families in the vicar’s chair through the 1400s.

Blades belong to the town almost as long. The smiths of Scarperia were making knives from the town’s founding, and their craft survived the rise and fall of every regime; the museum opened in 1999 to document the tradition, and the workshops around the castle still temper and grind steel by hand. Meanwhile the surrounding countryside became the Medici heartland: Cosimo the Elder rebuilt the castle of Il Trebbio as a fortified villa and patronised the Franciscan convent of Bosco ai Frati, and a century later Duke Cosimo I raised the Fortress of San Martino above San Piero a Sieve to guard the family’s lands against armies descending from the north.

What to see

Begin at the castle-palace that anchors the town. The Palace of the Vicars preserves the atmosphere of Florentine administration in the Mugello — the seat from which the vicars governed — and its salons now share space with the Museum of Cutting Blades, which traces the art of the coltellinai from medieval forge to modern workshop. The arcaded Piazza dei Vicari outside frames the whole ensemble, and steps away the Collegiate Church of Santi Jacopo e Filippo stands as the town’s parish landmark.

Drive or walk into the hills for the Medici monuments. At Il Trebbio, the Castello del Trebbio is the fortified villa-castle Michelozzo raised for Cosimo de’ Medici over the remains of an older feudal tower — one of the earliest Medici country seats and a UNESCO-listed villa. On its commanding hill above San Piero a Sieve, the Fortress of San Martino — commissioned by Cosimo I and completed under Ferdinando I in the early seventeenth century — shows a huge irregular plan of nine bastions, two gates, windmills, barracks and gun workshops; a garrison fortress built to protect the Medici state. In the woods of Lucignano, the Bosco ai Frati Convent hides Michelozzo’s 1420 rebuilding for Cosimo the Elder, with a cloister, rib-vaulted choir and a chapter-house museum holding a striking 1460 wooden crucifix attributed to Donatello or his workshop.

Finally, go back before Florence. North of Sant’Agata, the Montaccianico Archaeological Site excavates the Ubaldini stronghold that ruled this land until the early 1300s, with digs run alongside the University of Florence; its finds and context are interpreted at the Sant’Agata Archaeological Documentation Centre in the old parish complex nearby.

How to experience

Try the craft, not just the display. Workshops in Scarperia still forge and sharpen knives by hand, and many will demonstrate tempering and grinding; the museum hosts sharpening demonstrations in season. If your visit falls near 8 September, look for the Giorno dei Diavoletti, the town’s satirical festival in which giant papier-mâché devils parade through the streets — one of Tuscany’s oddest and best-loved traditions. The MotoGP Italian Grand Prix at the nearby Mugello circuit each late spring transforms the area’s rhythm entirely.

Structure a day around three loops: the town centre with palace and museum; the Medici circuit of Il Trebbio, San Martino and Bosco ai Frati; and the Sant’Agata hillside for Montaccianico. Walkers can follow country lanes between them, and cyclists use the Mugello roads constantly. Eat in the town’s trattorias — the Mugello table is generous, with tortelli, mushrooms and chestnut dishes in autumn — and buy a blade as the most local of souvenirs.

Practical planning

Scarperia e San Piero lies in the Mugello about 35 kilometres north of Florence, reached by the SS65 Futa road or by the Faentina railway, whose stations at Scarperia and San Piero a Sieve link the towns with Florence in under an hour. Cars park outside the historic centre; the castle district is compact and flat enough for easy walking, while the Medici sites require short drives or rural lanes.

Opening arrangements vary widely: the Palace of the Vicars and the Museum of Cutting Blades keep published schedules, the Medici villas and fortress open on limited days with guided access, and Bosco ai Frati’s museum has its own hours — check ahead, especially outside summer. Spring and autumn suit the region best; note that the Mugello Grand Prix weekend fills all accommodation. Two days allow the town plus the full Medici and archaeological circuit at an unhurried pace.

Nearby places

• Vinci — Leonardo’s birthplace with its museums, over the hills west of the Arno.
• Fiesole — the Etruscan and Roman hill town in Florence’s doorstep.
• Impruneta — terracotta country and a famed basilica south of Florence.