Another great testimony of the presence of the Medici family in Tuscany is their impressive villas they used as summer residences. This tour starts with the visit of the Medicea villa in Poggio a Caiano, designed by Giuliano da Sangallo for Lorenzo the Magnificent and built around 1480, this is the best known of the Medici villas.

In front of the villa there is a garden redesigned in the nineteenth century. The villa has an unusual "H" -shaped ground plan which stands on a porticoe base. A loggia (portico) with Ionic columns and a broad pediment with a glazed terra-cotta frieze by Andrea Sansovino (the original is in a room inside) is situated at the center of the harmonious classical facade. Of particular note in the marvellously furnished interior is the splendid "Salone di Leone X" (which takes its name from the famous pope, son of Lorenzo the Magnificent) with important sixteenth-century frescoes: episodes from Roman history, with obvious allusions to the life of Lorenzo, were begun by Andrea del Sarto and finished by Alessandro Allori.

The trip carries on towards Carmignano where it one can see the villa "La Ferdinanda". The villa was designed by Buontalenti in 1594 as a "hunting lodge" for Ferdinand I, since it lay in the vicinity of the vast private hunting reserve (hundreds of hectares on Monte Albano), set aside by Cosimo I. The most striking element is the host of chimneys (which have earned it the name of "Villa of the hundred chimneys") which, like so many miniature towers, add a note of gaiety to the austere facade. Actually there are only forty, and each one corresponds to a specific room.

The famous series of lunettes by the Flemish painter Giusto Utens which depict the Medici villas were in the main room which is at present primarily used for lectures, conventions and banquets. Heading back towards Florence there are two more "must-sees" near Sesto Fiorentino: they are La Petraia, and Castello (only the garden).
Villa La Petraia was formerly a castle of the Brunelleschi family, and in 1575 it passed to Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici who had Buontalenti completely renovate the structure. Of particular beauty is the great entrance court: covered with a glass skylight in the nineteenth century so it could serve as a ball room, it houses a series of frescoes by Volterrano (17th cent.) depicting the pomp of the house of Medici. Elected as his summer residence by Victor Emmanuel II, the villa still has richly furnished period rooms (an odd collection of parlour games is also on view).

The building overlooks an Italian-style garden laid out by Tribolo, who also designed the famous fountain of "Fiorenza Emerging from the Water" sculpted by Giambologna. Nurseries, hothouses and basins are scattered throughout the "terraces", with their geometrically patterned boxwood hedges. The spacious English park stretches between the villa of the Petraia and that of Castello, and is characterized by its dense groves of holm-oaks, cedars, pines, plane trees, conceived by the Bohemian landscape artist J. Fritsch, for the Lorraines.