Italy · 17th century
Sammezzano, or the Castle of Sammezzano, is an Italian palazzo in Tuscany featuring Moorish Revival architectural style. It is located in Leccio, a hamlet of Reggello, in the Province of Florence.
The original palazzo was erected in about 1605 by the Spanish nobleman Ximenes of Aragon. In the 19th century, Ferdinando Panciatichi Ximenes d'Aragona inherited the property and remodelled it into one of the largest examples of Moorish Revival architecture between 1853 and 1889. Umberto I, king of Italy, visited Ximenes at Sammezzano in 1878.
The palazzo served as a luxury hotel in the post World War II era; then was vacated and closed. A committee called FPXA 1813–2013, an abbreviation for Ferdinand Panciatichi Ximenes d’Aragon, was organized in 2012 to attempt to restore and preserve the palazzo, which has 365 rooms, each with unique Moorish revival decoration.
The Castle of Sammezzano can be seen in the 38 minute long video Beyond the Shores (on Death and Dying) by the band Shores of Null.
The castle was used as a filming location for the 1989 television horror film Dinner with a Vampire (Italian: A cena col vampiro) as well as the 2025 Sandokan series, where it was used to represent the residence of the Sultan of Brunei.
Text adapted from “Sammezzano” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Castle of Sammezzano ranks #1,004 of 9,079 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #73 of the 560 mapped in Italy. Founded c. 1605, it is older than 30% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 721 atlas entries founded in the 17th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 5,362 times in the last 60 days, more than 87% of the atlas. 16 more atlas landmarks stand within 25 km. The nearest day-trip guide is Florence, 19 km away. It is one of the 43 landmarks on the atlas's regional map of Tuscany. See how Italy compares in the castle statistics.
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