Michelangelo’s Villa for Sale, Olive Mill Included

“I think the prop­erty would be per­fect for some­one who has a love of olive oil and would like to restore the old mill,” the inter­na­tional real estate spe­cial­ist for Handsome Properties International, Annie Madren Young, told Olive Oil Times. ​“The olive grove can offer a small pro­duc­tion with its 200 olive trees.”

We are talk­ing about a villa that once belonged to Michelangelo, which includes an almost 1,000-year-old olive press with a mill­stone in untouched con­di­tion, and has now been offered for sale.

The ​‘the first artist rec­og­nized by con­tem­po­raries as a genius’ and ​‘one of the great­est of all time’, paid 2,360 florins in 1549 for the prop­erty that over the cen­turies has changed hands only a few times. The Buonarroti fam­ily owned it until 1867, it was sold again in 1888 and acquired by the cur­rent own­ers in 1973.

The third home­own­ers since Michelangelo are a cou­ple who lived on the prop­erty for over 20 years and lov­ingly restored it to pre­serve the orig­i­nal atmos­phere. You can feel the his­tory enter­ing the mill and by touch­ing the orig­i­nal stone, still worn out by the unceas­ing labor of don­keys.

The villa is nes­tled on the slopes of rolling Tuscan hills, in Castellina in Chianti, halfway between Siena and Firenze. It con­sists of 2.5 hectares (a lit­tle more than 6 acres) of land embrac­ing a 1,200 square-meter house (approx­i­mately 13,000 square feet) which includes ten bed­rooms, seven bath­rooms and five fire­places.

An ancient Etruscan dri­ve­way leads to the main house, which is con­nected to a tower that dates back to 1047, and two pri­vate apart­ments. The third floor of the main house has been left unre­stored, allow­ing the future owner to remodel the space to their lik­ing, while an addi­tional build­ing can be used as stor­age.

The ancient mill is located on the ground floor of a build­ing with a two-bed­room apart­ment on the top floor and a bal­cony that offers a breath­tak­ing view of the land­scape.

Sprinkled with an astound­ing num­ber of orig­i­nal and intact his­tor­i­cal items in addi­tion to the mill, like tiles, beams, win­dowsills and thresh­olds, the kitchen sink and vaulted brick ceil­ings, the prop­erty is on the mar­ket for €7.5 mil­lion ($8.4 mil­lion). The pur­chase will be accom­pa­nied by a copy of the orig­i­nal deed that resides in a museum in Florence.

When the cur­rent own­ers were asked who they thought would be the best fit for the prop­erty, Young said the answer was very sim­ple: ​“They wanted the new owner to love the prop­erty as much as they do. They believe they are not the ​‘own­ers’ of the prop­erty but rather stew­ards of a sacred piece of his­tory, and they are look­ing for some­one to whom they can pass the torch, so to speak.”

They believe that who­ever has the same love and appre­ci­a­tion for the prop­erty will con­tinue to pre­serve and pro­tect the for­mer home of Michelangelo, a piece of his­tory com­bined with the rar­ity of an ancient mill.