Castello di Verrazzano site features

The approach is the first thing: the castle sits on a hill at 348 metres, with the vineyards of the estate below it. It reads as a villa-farm rather than a fortress, because that is what three successive conversions made of it.

The oldest element is the tower. A crenellated tower of the 13th century survives from what may have been a guardingo — a watch-post rather than a residence. Everything around it is at least two centuries younger.

The castle proper was built between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, then reworked as a casa da signore — a gentleman's house, the step between fortified building and villa.

The 17th century made it what it is: a classic villa with a Tuscan fattoria, surrounded by an Italian garden. The farm is not a backdrop to the villa; the two were designed as one working thing, which is why the estate is still a wine producer.

The chapel annexed to the castle holds the panel of the Eterno Padre by Ghirlandaio — the single most valuable object on the hill, in the smallest building on it.

Visits run through the gardens and the historic ageing cellars, which are cut into the hill beneath the castle.

The birthplace of Giovanni da Verrazzano

The navigator was born here in 1485. The statue in Greve's square, two kilometres away, is of the same man — the comune claims him twice over, once in its market place and once on this hill.

The 13th-century crenellated tower

The survivor. It belonged to what may have been a guardingo, and it is older than the castle attached to it by some two hundred years.

Ghirlandaio's Eterno Padre

In the chapel annexed to the castle. A panel by one of the defining painters of Florentine Quattrocento, in a private chapel on a Chianti hillside.

The Italian garden

Laid out when the castle became a 17th-century villa with a Tuscan farm. It is part of the visit rather than an outlook from it.

The historic ageing cellars

Built into the hill below the castle, and the other half of what a booked visit covers. An estate that has been farming this slope for centuries stores its wine inside it.

Three buildings in one

Castle, then casa da signore, then villa with fattoria. Each conversion is legible, and the reason the place looks less defensive than its name promises.