Tourist routes
Old town centre tour

The itinerary offers a tour of the historic buildings and churches of the town. The route stretches as far as the highest and most panoramic point of the town, unwinding through the lanes of the ancient hamlet to terminate with the visit to the new and prestigious Ceramics Museum. The starting point is at the junction between Via Garibaldi and Via Baccio Sinibaldi; from here we proceed along the latter road where we come to the Paris church of San Giovanni Evangelista, a religious building dating to 1326, rebuilt in its present form towards the end of the eighteenth century, which houses a panel painting of the Madonna and child with Saints of San Giovanni is the Oratory of the Spirito Santo, which now belongs to the Arciconfraternita della Misericordia. Although the building itself appears in no way remarkable, it houses within a canvas portraying the Assumption with Adoration of the Saints attributed to the Florentine artist Lorenzo Lippi.
A little further on stands  the Palazzo of the Podestà (Museum of contemporary ceramics) characterised by a fine modern loggia at street level and the coats of arms of the various podestà, or governors. In the interior, in what was the Sala della Giustizia, we can admire among other things a fresco of a maestà, the Madonna Enthroned between Saints Lawrence and John the Evangelist, datable at the end of the thrird decade of the fifteenth century and attributed to the painter Mariotto di Cristofano, Masaccio’s brother in law. The itinerary continues uphill along Via di Malmantile as far the Priory of San Lorenzo, built over the remains of the castle constructed in 1203. After having admired the panoramic view from the highest point of the town, we descend along the same road as far as the junction with Via San Giuseppe. After this we traverse the lanes of the ancient medieval hamlet, continuing along Via San Giuseppe as far as the junction with Via Tassinari, where we come to the well know as the Pozzo dei Lavatoi, which has yielded a large quantity of fragmentary remains that have made it possible to reconstruct the history of the ceramics of Montelupo, and which are now part of the collection of the Ceramics Museum. A little further on, following Vicolo Raffaello Sinibaldi, we come to the birthplace of Baccio Sinibaldi, the father of Raffaello, a fomouse sculptor and architect who lived between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The last stop on our route, which is undoubtedly the most important, is the new Ceramics Museum, which we reach proceeding downhill along Via Giro delle Mura.

City park Tour

The characteristic feature of this itinerary are the numerous parks and gardens, including the Parco dell’Ambrogiana, through which most of the route unwinds, ending up in Torre, an area of Montelupo that owes its name to the construsction of a massive mediaeval tower which later belonged to the Frescobaldi. The tour begins in the old town centre. And then crosses the Pesa torrent to reach the beginning of Viale Umberto I. After the first stretch of the avenue, we come to the gardens of the Parco dell’Ambrogiana which, like the namesake district of Montelupo. Are named after the Florentine Ambrogi family that owned the area in the course of the fifteenth century. The Medici Villa, standing at the confluence of the Pesa torrent and the Arno river, , was built in the years 1587-89. Il was used by the Medici family both as a hunting lodge and as a stopping-place on their journeys between Flornece and Livorno and Pisa. Iskirting the left side of the Villa, we come to the garden of the ancient Convent of the Alcantarini, built by Cosimo III de Medici to accommodate the father devoted to the convent orchard we can still see a mechanical device, know as a bindolo, which was used to raise the water for irrigation, while built up against the enclosure walls are two small Chapels in which we can admire frescoes by Poer Dandini portraying religious scenes and episodes from the life of St. Peter of Alcantara.
Leaving the garden by the gate that gives into VIA DELLA Chiesa, we emerge in front of the Church of Saints Quirico, Lucia and Pietro d’Alcantara: originally dedicated to Saint Peter of Alcantara alone, consonant with the austere lifestyle of the friars it features a single aisle with two altars dedicated to the Immaculate Conception ad Saint Francis of Assisi.
At this point theitineray continues in the Archaelogical Museum where the numerous exhibits in display document huma settlements in the territory from the Lower Palaeolithic through to the late Middle Ages. The premises of the museum themselves con justly be considered af great interest, since the excavations carried out prior to the renovation of the building have brought to light significant traces of a roman necropolis, above which the first Christian church, dedicated to saint Quirico, or Cyricus, was built in the  eight century AD. From 1482 this building was incorporate with the church of  Santa Lucia, founded at least as far back as the previous century. After the visit to the museum, the itinerary continues along the Arno, where after a short distance we come to the Torre dei frescobaldi. The Torre district is connected with glass-working, and hence its principal monument is the ideal site to house in the near future a museum devoted to this trade and to that of the fiascaie, the women who in the past were specialised in plaiting the straw coverings for the glass wine-flasks. The walk continues, first skirting the river along Via Torre andthen along the riverbank itself in the direction of the Fibbiana district.
After about 1 kilometre, we come to the magnificent Villa Mannelli, standing in the middle of the countryside. The battlements that crown the villa, which can be glimpsed from the riverbank, may well have derived from a defensive.
 Structure that was then incorporated into the mansion. To reach the villa, we have to turn left and follow the tree-lined avenue, skirting the enclosure walls. Having reached the main gate we can admire the façade, complete with the pediment and clock that give it a characteristic eighteenth-century appearance. The villa is now private property and hence the interior cannot be visited.