The television series Medici from Tivoli to Viterbo

A perfect example of the harmonious blend of classical beauty and nature, making it an essential stop on the Grand Tour, this town at the foot of the Tiburtini Mountains is a regular feature in the television series Medici. It appears in the first episode of the first season, when Villa Adriana provides a striking nocturnal setting for the meeting between Cosimo and Donatello.

In the first episode of the second season, the action moves to Villa d’Este, where among the trompe-l’œil frescoes of the Salone della Fontana, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Poliziano and Sandro Botticelli spend the evening discussing art, faith and philosophy.

In the third season, a recurring setting is the church of San Pietro alla Carità, located between the Villa d’Este estate, overlooked by the apse of the church, and the village that its simple Romanesque façade faces. In the drama, the church lends its interiors to the convent of San Marco in Florence, where Girolamo Savonarola was elected prior on 16 May 1491 and where he was captured on the evening of 8 April 1498. The church of San Pietro alla Carità and its massive bell tower appear in several scenes in which Savonarola harangues the crowd, while the fateful encounters between Lorenzo and Savonarola, set in the dim light of its solemn three-nave interior, provide an opportunity to admire its beautiful Cosmatesque floor.

The towns in the countryside surrounding Rome, historically visited and beautified by high-ranking prelates and Vatican officials, are ideal for recreating Rome’s atmosphere of the period. One example is the Orsini-Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, which makes regular appearances in the television series and is used as a kind of film studio to recreate a variety of different locations: from the rooms of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, played by Dustin Hoffman, to the Neapolitan castle of Ferdinand I, where Il Magnifico proposes an alliance between Florence and Naples, from the Fortress of Sarzana to the Medici Bank, from Volterra to Florence by night, to name but a few.

About twenty kilometres from Bracciano, on the slopes of the Tolfa mountains, the remote Rota Castle, surrounded by greenery and mist, was also used as a set in the first season to depict Francesco Sforza’s camp, visited by Contessina de’ Bardi, and the places where Lorenzo pursues and captures the mercenary Ferzetti.

A few kilometres further on, you reach the Tyrrhenian coast, dominated by Santa Severa Castle, a real landmark on the stretch of coastline between Fregene and Civitavecchia, which appears more than once over the course of the three seasons, despite being extremely recognisable.

There are several anachronisms associated with the use in Medici of the majestic Palazzo Farnese in Caprarola, not least the fact that the palace was built by Vignola a century after the events depicted. Nevertheless, the palace is an effective setting for several Vatican scenes: for example, its magnificent frescoed loggia is where the cardinals parade during the conclave in the first episode. It is also the setting where, in the third season, the Treaty of Bagnolo is signed; in the series, this treaty ends the war against the Medici, while in reality it marked the end of the Salt War between Ferrara and Venice.

A second set for the series was constructed in the palace grounds, around the hunting lodge, also known as Casina del Piacere, which was built in the second half of the 16th century by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese. In the series, the hunting lodge stands in for the Montelupo Estate, a villa in the Pistoia countryside where Lorenzo sends his wife Clarice, his sons Piero and Giovanni, and other family members to protect them from the plague that is ravaging Florence.

Just by removing the shop signs and scattering some straw on the streets of the San Pellegrino quarter, they were able to transform the well-preserved old town of Viterbo into the perfect 15th-century setting. Long frequented by popes and high-ranking prelates, in the 13th century the small capital of Lazio even served as a stand-in for the Vatican, and much of the layout of the city’s square can be attributed to that period. Dedicated to St Lawrence, the square is widely used in the television series and is easily recognisable thanks to the magnificent Loggia of the Benedictions in the Palace of the Popes,  which, as in historical reality, also served as the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican in the fictional series. The nearby Cathedral of San Lorenzo was also used for filming a particularly important scene in the first episode of the first season, in which the Medici’s protégé, Baldassarre Cossa, is crowned pontiff.

On the outskirts of Viterbo, in the hamlet of Bagnaia, you can find another palace used in the television series: the gardens of the 16th-century Villa Lante serve as the setting in which Lucrezia Tornabuoni, mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, uses her diplomatic skills to convince Cardinal Orsini to give his niece Clarice in marriage to Lorenzo.