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Page 2 of 3 The 1430 land register records the enlargement of the building from fortress to manor house: “A holding in the parish of Santo Romolo at Campestri in the Mugello of 40 staiora for better or worse with 6 staiora of vineyards and a mill belonging to the above property…" In 1446 Saint Antonino, the Archbishop of Florence, lodged in the villa on the occasion of a pastoral visit to consecrate the church of San Romolo at Campestri, and discovering that Giovanni Roti’s wife was childless, predicted that the family would nevertheless not die out. Sure enough, the couple had a child, called Grazia Antonio, that year and other children followed. The Roti family commemorated the visit with a plaque in the room where the saint had slept. On the same visit, Saint Antonino planted a cypress tree in front of the church of San Romolo and it is nowadays considered one of the great monumental trees of Tuscany and protected by a special regional law passed in 1998. It is the oldest tree in the Mugello and has a circumference at the bottom of its trunk of 6 metres and is 15 metres tall. A second important architectural intervention, which gave the building its present appearance as a renaissance villa, took place in the late 17th century. In the records of the Grand Duchy for 1773 we find: “A gentleman’s residence with courtyard and other appurtenances, and with a vineyard below, with an aviary…”
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