Historical story

Lorenzo the Magnificent Environmentalist

Lorenzo the Magnificent in a portrait

It is not said “the Magnificent” not at all, Lorenzo de 'Medici (1449-1492).

Great politician, refined esthete, lover and lover of Art, writer, poet and patron, the most famous member of the most important Florentine family of the Renaissance era, he was also distinguished by a environmental awareness then anything but common, which ranged from innate love for animals to respect for everything that was natural.

It was for this reason that the Magnificent he set up a farm, Le Cascine , at his villa in Poggio a Caiano (Prato), which he filled with white fallow deer, peacocks, rabbits and where he also housed the giraffe given to him by Mohamed ibn-Mahfuz (see https://www.pilloledistoria.it/8312/storia-moderna/gli-strani-animali-da-compagnia-di-alcuni-personaggi-storici).

And it doesn't stop there.

In fact, in this property of him, Lorenzo also dedicated himself to silkworm breeding , to the production of foods such as cheese and honey and even the cultivation of rice , which at the end of the 1400s was still in an experimental phase.