A few kilometers away from the village of the town, the house where he was born is located in a hamlet north of the municipality of Vinci called Anchiano . It is located on the slopes of Montalbano about 200 meters above sea level, and is defined by the streams of Balenaia and Quercete, which in Leonardo's time fed the various mills scattered throughout the area.
Already from the first Florentine cadastre of 1427, in Anchiano there is news of nine buildings, with small and large plots of cultivated land.
There have been countless debates about Leonardo's actual place of birth, however, after years of research, it has been established with certainty that the actual place is in Anchiano . Ser Tomme , in a paper document, described his ownership:
«A small farm located in the municipality of Vinci, a place called Anchiano with a worker's chase and Infrantoio and cholombaia without courtyard pigeons and vegetable gardens and worked lands and olive groves, vineyards and wooded fruit trees and boiled between its words and chonfini belonging to said small farm which held Inpegno set lodovico di sel duccio from saminiato ..."
( Ser Tomme di Marco di Tommaso da Isola, 1470 )
This description coincides with the words of ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo's father:
«A farm with an almost ruined worker's chasa, and a chasetta started by an innkeeper, and with worked lands and fruited and wooded olive trees and all its belongings, located in the community of Sancta lucia in the paternal municipality of Vinci, bordering on Florence, a place called Anchiano ... »
( Ser Piero Da Vinci, 1495 )
In 1452, the year of birth of Leonardo da Vinci, in the locality of Anchiano there were already several buildings, one of which was the same house where he was born. The house was owned by ser Tomme di Marco di Tommaso da Isola, a notary, just like Leonardo's father.
Then the entire building was divided into two distinct parts, built in different periods. The oldest part was used by the farm worker, while the other was the owner's part. Although recently built, this last part was joined to the other forming a single agglomeration. In 1952, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of Leonardo's birth, the restoration brought to light the parts of the house also described in archival sources.
The house is made up of three large rooms: an entrance hall with a fifteenth-century fireplace decorated with a coat of arms carved on the pediment, a bedroom and a room used for various services. In the 1952 restoration it was not possible to reconstruct the various arrangements and readjustments of the raised floors, therefore it was decided to bring to light only the master walls, while at the same time giving a correct physiognomy of the original structure.
Already from 1449, in the basement of the structure, there are news of an oil mill, managed by Leonardo's paternal ancestor, Antonio Da Vinci, who in that year was able to compile an inscription in the interest of the owner of the land and of other interested parties private lease and sharing in the profits of the mill. The house also has a large courtyard surrounded by centuries-old olive trees from which it is possible to have a panoramic view of the Montalbano hill, the Val di Nievole , the lower valley of the Arno , the Pisan and Lucca mountains and even the hills facing the Tyrrhenian Sea .
The da Vinci family had no possessions in the town of Anchiano . Ser Tomme di Marco di Tommaso da Isola in 1479 donated his properties (including the house) to the Convent of the Friars of the Servi di Maria in Florence in exchange for an annuity, giving Ser Piero da Vinci the opportunity to buy it three years later. It was only then that the facade was adorned with the large stone family crest, still present. In the 1952 restoration, the coat of arms was placed in the internal room for conservation reasons, leaving a copy outside.
The house passed over the years to follow the descendants of ser Piero da Vinci, until in 1624 Guglielmo da Vinci, nephew of Guglielmo's carnal brother of Leonardo, a friar in the convent of S. Lucia in Florence, left his goods to the aforementioned structure. In 1629 the house passed through an exchange to the assets of the grand ducal crown of Tuscany and from this in 1645 to Count Francesco Antonio da Bagnano, whose descendants, the Masetti da Bagnano, kept it until 1932, when it was sold to Count Giovanni Rasini di Castel Campo who bought the structure to use it for the restoration and for Leonardo's collective memory. The count donated the building to the municipality of Vinci on 10 October 1950.
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