|
- The Story-
 The Villa della Seta at Corliano is a “Palazzo of Gentlemen, with a staircase out front, with a gallery at the main door, with a spring and surrounding land for the use of the aforesaid palazzo” which the Florentine Vincenzo Pitti described as “the most beautiful mansion that there is near Pisa” in the first half of the seventeenth century.
It was the Spini family of Florence, who had started construction of the Villa in the first half of the fifteenth century, which sold the estate of Corliano with its mansion house for 1500 florins to the della Seta family. The original deed of purchase, drawn up in Palermo in 1536, is still in the Agostini Venerosi della Seta family archives. At the sides of the Villa there are the buildings of the farm and olive oil mill, built at the end of the eighteenth century. These were part of a farming enterprise which exported olive oil, produced on the three estates that the family had in Tuscany (at Corliano of San Giuliano, Colleoli of Palaia and Capannile of Lari), to Europe and America up until the first years of the twentieth century.
The palazzo, renovated by the architect Ignazio Pellegrini in the eighteenth century, is externally decorated with sixteenth century graffiti, typical of the Florentine mannerism style. Harpies, crowns of fruit and flowers, birds and other symbols represent the virtues of “Fortitude, Abundance and Fortune”. The same themes are to be found in the internal frescoes of the main reception hall (attributed to Boscoli) and in those along the main staircase.
The park of 35,000 square metres, with centuries old trees, encloses the eighteenth century Coffee House, the stables and the small church of St. Peter and Paul (the altar was purchased from the church of St.Torpè of Pisa in 1793), where family ancestors are buried.
The Villa has hosted many illustrious guests such as Gustavus III of Sweden, Christian II of Denmark, the Royal Family of Great Britain, Benedict Stuart Cardinal of York, General Murat, Luigi Buonaparte, Paolina Borghese, Carlo Alberto of Savoy, the poets Byron and Shelley, and various other personages from the history books.
The area of the Pisa hills was already an attraction for enlightened travellers in the first half of the 1700s with the growth of the thermal spa of San Giuliano, which became a fashionable spot for the well-off classes. The mansions on the road along the hills, already renowned as places of gentle idleness and relaxation in the heart of the countryside and also for their small industrial facilities for the transformation of agricultural products, soon assumed the characteristics of true leisure resorts, just like those narrated by Carlo Goldoni and which we can continue to enjoy today.
- The Ghost-
 Legend has it that in the Villa della Seta at Corliano along the road running at the foot of the mount between Pisa and Lucca, there still moves the apparition of Teresa della Seta Bocca Gaetani, of famed beauty, descendant of an ancient Pisan family and given in marriage, in 1755, to the Count Cosimo Baldassarre Agostini.
It seems that the noblewoman appears every now and then in the rooms of the mansion, moving tapestries and ornaments. Other times she has been known to slam doors and open windows. Some of the local peasants recall her arriving on certain nights by the light of the full moon. She appears on the drive of the park leading a coach and six, and then stops on the bend of the Ragnaia (“Cobweb corner”, so-called from the old name for the nets that hunters formerly used in the woods to capture small birds) to cast a glance towards the home where she once lived happily.
The ghost, obviously of good nature, has been heard other times hurrying along and giggling in the underground passages of the villa, beneath the large wine cellars. The years go by and stories are told and retold, and there are still those who recall the evening in which there was the sound of an almighty clatter as one of the crystal chandeliers of the hall crashed to the floor. Those present dashed to the hall, only to discover on arriving there, that the chandelier was very much in its place. And still today odd episodes occur … |
