Saint Andrew or 'San Zio' Church

Località San Zio

'San Zio' is the name by which the small town located along the road that leads from Cerreto Guidi to the Arno was known during Leonardo Da Vinci's time. It was already inhabited in the early Middle Ages and took its name from the ancient church of San Sentio, one of the churches near Vinci which belonged to the Guidi counts until the mid-thirteenth century. Among the population of San Zio there were the properties of some families of Florentine origin such as the Adimari but also Leonardo's family had a farm here, in the place called Sanzio. It was an area characterized by gentle slopes, rich in waterways, dotted with villas and farmhouses of the typical Tuscan sharecropping landscape. From the second half of the sixteenth century many of the lands of the people of San Zio were purchased by the Grand Duke together with the houses of the castle of Cerreto on which the large Medici villa was subsequently built.

On the sixteenth-century map, the church of San Zio appears as a single room with a gable roof. The facade was opened by a circular window, an oculus, and a cross was placed on the top of the tympanum. A bell gable rises from the right pitch of the roof, in the rear position. The church was located in an elevated position on a circular balcony surrounded by trees. This is how Leonardo da Vinci must have seen it, very similar to the current appearance of the church of San Bartolomeo in Streda. The current church of San Zio, on the other hand, has late architectural forms, squeezed between the buildings that lean against it on both sides, leaving only the circular apse and the facade visible. The volume of the building could belong to the church as seen by Leonardo, but the facade is the result of a subsequent reconstruction and the bell gable, positioned on the façade elevation, was probably moved from the original position.