Villa Guinigi - Matraia

When the Guinigi family, rulers of Lucca, decided to edificate their summer estate in the firs half of the seventeenth century, Matraia offered the perfect position to enjoy a temperate climate and the best view of the city, enframed by the hills of Lucca.

It has not had many owners during a period of five hundred years and that has made possible a work of preservation and restoration that, at the present moment, permit us to admire the original features of this noble estate with still working annexes, now used as typical tuscan apartments and rustics.
The palace was totally restored by Vincenzo Guinigi between 1546 and 1547, and then enriched with ornaments between 1606 and 1616. Terrace gardens and modifications to the garden, in which we can now find fountains linked to the new aqueduct, are due to Guinigi's son, Tommaso.

The porch was closed with glass doors in the ninettenth century, but mantained the original lunette vault supported by stoned corbels. The garden, whose project is visibile on a drawing dated 1734, run from the north side to the west side of the palace and it is divided in rectangular flowerbeds. They flanked the central paths that constitute the geometrical axis of the garden.

Today, the villa with its park and annexes are part of a prestigious residential block.