Castello di Sammezzano

Listen first. Up here on the wooded hill above Leccio, the air smells of resin and damp earth. Somewhere below, traffic hums along the valley of the Arno. But through the tall trees you can see something that does not belong to Tuscany at all. Pale walls, pointed arches and slender towers rise from the green, as if a palace from Andalusia, in southern Spain, had been lifted up and set down in the hills near Florence.

This is the Castle of Sammezzano, in the municipality of Reggello. From the outside, it can look like a large and slightly faded villa. The surprise is inside. Behind these walls lies one of the most extraordinary interiors in Italy. Room after room is covered in colour, geometric tiles, carved stucco and intricate patterns. The style is called Moorish Revival. It is a nineteenth century European fashion that borrowed the look of Islamic architecture from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East.

The estate is much older than its decoration. A building has stood on this hill for many centuries. Legend has it that Charlemagne himself passed this way, although that story belongs to local folklore rather than to the record. What we can say with more confidence is that the property later belonged to the Ximenes family, a wealthy family with Iberian roots. Through inheritance, it passed down to the man who would turn it into a dream.

His name was Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona. He was a Florentine aristocrat, an engineer by inclination, a botanist and a politician. In the middle of the nineteenth century, he began to transform the old villa. The work continued for decades, through most of the second half of that century. Ferdinando is generally credited as the designer himself. He did not hand the project to a famous architect. He planned the rooms, the patterns and the colours with his own vision and a team of local craftsmen.

Here is the first thing most visitors do not know. It is often said that Ferdinando never travelled to Spain, and never saw the Alhambra in Granada, the great Moorish palace that his castle seems to echo. Instead, he is believed to have worked from books, prints and drawings. If that is true, this whole fantasy was built from paper and imagination. A man in Tuscany created his own version of a world he knew only from images.

The interior is famous for its sheer number of rooms. People commonly say the castle has 365 of them, one for each day of the year. Treat that as a popular saying rather than an exact count. Still, the scale is real. Corridors open into halls, and halls open into smaller chambers. Each one has its own pattern of arches, tiles and painted ceilings. No two rooms are quite the same.

The most celebrated space is the Hall of the Peacocks. Its name comes from the colours. Deep blues, greens and gold cover the walls and the vaulted ceiling, and the bright fan shapes recall the tail of a peacock. Other rooms carry names like the White Room and the Hall of Mirrors. In photographs, the effect is almost dizzying. Light falls on raised stucco, and the patterns seem to repeat without end.

Now for the second surprise. Above one of the doorways, Ferdinando placed the Latin words "Non plus ultra". They mean "nothing further beyond". It is a proud phrase. It suggests that this is the limit, the place where nothing better exists. Some read it as a statement of personal pride. Others read it as a quiet challenge to the fashions of his time. Either way, it tells you how Ferdinando saw his own work.

His passion did not stop at the walls. Ferdinando was a keen botanist, and he turned the surrounding hillside into a park filled with trees from far away. The most striking are the giant sequoias, the redwoods native to California. Some of them are now very tall, and they tower over the native oaks and pines. When you look at the grounds, you are looking at a nineteenth century plant collection that has had well over a century to grow.

After Ferdinando's death, the castle passed through different hands. In the twentieth century, it entered a very different life. For a period after the Second World War, it worked as a luxury hotel and restaurant. Guests ate and slept inside these painted rooms. That chapter ended around 1990, when the hotel closed. Since then, the castle has stood largely empty.

The years of silence have not been kind. The building has changed owners, and it has gone through sales and auctions. Water, time and neglect have damaged parts of the decoration. Local people and supporters formed groups to campaign for its rescue, and Sammezzano became a symbol of heritage at risk in Italy. Images of its rooms spread widely online, and many people now know this place only from photographs.

That is important for you, standing here today. The castle is private property, and the interior is normally closed to the public. On rare occasions, organised visits or open days have taken place. Without one of those, you will see the exterior and the setting, but not the famous halls. So take time with what is in front of you. Notice the pointed windows, the crenellated towers and the contrast between the pale stone and the dark green trees.

As you stand here, think about the distance between what you see and what lies behind these walls. Outside, there are quiet hills, birdsong and the smell of pine. Inside, there are hundreds of patterned rooms, made by one man who dreamed of a world far away. When you walk back down towards the valley, look over your shoulder once more. The towers will drop behind the sequoias, and the Tuscan countryside will close around this strange and beautiful palace again.