The villa has very ancient origins, having belonged first to the Alberti family, then to the Bardi, one of the Florentine families also related to the Medici house, and finally to the Guicciardini from whom it takes its name. The Alberti, already counts of Prato, had vast possessions also in the Bisenzio Valley, as attested by the famous Rocca Cerbaia, which however in the 12th century were sold to the Florentine Bardi family.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the villa’s properties and related annexes passed to the Guicciardini. The circumstance is that they were transferred by inheritance, as the last owner from the Bardi family was Count Piermaria, who was cavalier servente and personal advisor to Lady Caterina Bartolommei, wife of Count Lorenzo Guicciardini, to whose sons Francesco and Ferdinando, Bardi left these properties as inheritance. Subsequently, in a deed of division, the Usella complex was assigned to Ferdinando Guicciardini, then passed first to his son Carlo, and finally to his son, who again took the name Ferdinando and who was the author of the great transformation works at the end of the 19th century.
In ancient times, it was therefore an Alberti outpost, located right on the border with Prato, which then probably grew during the Bardi management, until it became the center of a vast farm that extended on both sides of the nearby Bisenzio River. Its management and the quality of its crops had become an excellence of the area, and its interests also expanded toward actual productive activities. Among the farm’s possessions we indeed find a mill, located in its vicinity, near the Bisenzio, to which, at the time of the emerging Prato industry at the end of the 19th century, a small activity connected to textile production was also added. Another important productive activity linked to the farm was that connected to the presence of a brick kiln, certainly already present during the Bardi management period, but considerably expanded during the period of great transformations attributable to the Guicciardini.
In some structures of the villa itself, you can still find today some brick tiles with an original design on which the inscription ‘Fornace di Usella – Guicciardini’ is imprinted. Around the kiln, a small village had already formed in ancient times, probably inhabited by the workers of the kiln itself or in any case of the farm, and even a shop, called precisely ‘della fornace’ (of the kiln), built along the Main Road.
It is precisely due to this direct connection that from the central body of the farm departed a long avenue that ended with a gate leading to a humpback bridge over the Migliana stream, which connected the farm to the village. The central nucleus of the farm consisted, at least until the last decade of the 19th century, of a massive horseshoe-shaped body, around which extended a large semi-flat terrain used mainly for vegetable gardens. Of the internal changes we can only observe those of the ground floor, from which we can see the transformation of the farm environments into residential ones, and especially the formation of the small chapel that still exists today. Having no evidence of the upper floors, for the moment we can only hypothesize that they too were subject to transformation, as shown by the elegant decorated coffered ceilings present on the first floor, while the upper one, as customary, appears more spartan as it was probably intended for the servants. Extremely interesting is also the clock present on the crowning of the facade, whose mechanism is housed in a compartment accessed from the attic floor.
As attested by an inscription above the clock frame, this was built by clockmaker Egisto di Domenico Cavina of Modigliana in 1862, therefore well before the villa renovation of the complex’s wing and thus probably coming from a previous location. The mechanism is connected to an external bell that marks the sound every 12 hours.
The most radical transformation, however, concerned the facade of this wing, which thus became the main one of the villa, realized in a moderate 18th-century baroque style. These works in the eastern part of the complex had repercussions throughout its entire arrangement, which involved the transformation of the previous grain warehouses into stables for the new manor villa. The most evident feature of this transformation remains the relative facade, this time treated in neoclassical style. In front of the long side of the complex, on the stables’ side, a new building was then constructed, probably housing stalls and hay barns that had access from an avenue that departed, parallel to it, from the Main Road. The close pertinence of the original farm complex has always been, as it still is today, that enclosed within the stone perimeter wall.
“With the partial transformation of the farm complex into a villa, the garden in front of it was also probably transformed and integrated with a new portion of Italian garden, with geometric designs of flower beds, water basins and wooden bridges. The design of the same is attributed to Piero Berti, commissioned by Count Guicciardini himself around 1890. On the western border of the complex, there was already in ancient times a water basin fed by the Migliana ditch, which served both as a nursery and for feeding the fountains and basins of the park.
During the late 19th-century renovation, with the construction of the new oil mill, a second basin was built between this and the nursery basin, used as a millpond for activating the oil mill’s grinding mechanism.
Between the two basins, located at a higher level, and the villa garden, annexes were built for storing tools and especially as a lemon house, for the winter shelter of the numerous potted citrus plants that were scattered throughout the park.
This area and the garden in front were then connected by a pergola walkway, adorned with vine shoots and climbing roses, connected near the Italian garden by a small fountain with lateral stone seats and a gazebo with climbing plants.