The villa was built by Cosimo Sassetti between the end of 15th and the beginning of 16th century. Afterwards the villa belonged to the Strozzi family and from 1661 to the Vai family who trasformed it in a great estate with thirtysix farms.
The complex develops around a side court on which overlook the villa and the annexes. Here there are also the carpentry, the wash-houses and the rooms for pressing the olives. In the patronal part it's possible to admire the beautiful wooden ceiling and the painted walls. The environments of the farm keep an old kitchen called "big kitchen", with a great fireplace supported by stone corbels.
Between 1737 and 1738 was built the walled up garden entered by a gate with bearing pillars. At the end of the garden there is an elegant Nymphaeum with three niches decoreted by mosaics and nacres and surrounded by terracotta vases. A structure, that served as wine cellars in the lower side and as hayloft in the upper side, overlooks the garden.There are also traces of the old furnace. In a corner there is the oratory, built in 1722 and devoted to Saint Anthony Abbot.
Eighteenth-century statues, of local arts, represent Saint Anthony from Padoa with the Child and a The Virgin Mary Assumption in terracotta. Above the altar it is possible to admire a painting that represents a Madonna with Child between the Saints John the Evangelist and Anthony Abbot by Antonio Marini (1845).
The villa, as residence of the navigator Filippo Sassetti (1540-1588), is part of the Houses of Memory circuit.
Actually the villa belongs to the Municipality of Vaiano and can be visited only on the occasion of events.