Casa Vasari, Renaissance residence museum in Arezzo, Italy

Casa Vasari is the former residential home of artist Giorgio Vasari in Arezzo, a three-story building with richly decorated rooms. The walls of the main floors are covered with frescoes depicting mythological and biblical themes, all painted by the artist himself.

Vasari bought the house and its plot on 7 September 1541 and began decorating it the following year. In 1550 he married Niccolosa Bacci and moved in with her, though work in Florence and Rome kept him there only briefly. The fresco cycle, aided by his pupils, was finished in 1568; the house passed to the Fraternita dei Laici in 1687 and was sold to the Italian state in 1911.

The house displays frescoes showing arts and crafts that Vasari himself created to decorate his living space. These rooms reflect how the artist used his own home as a stage to showcase his skills.

The main floor is reached by a staircase topped by a five-to-sixteenth-century bust of Giorgio Vasari by an unknown Tuscan sculptor. The first room is the Sala del Camino, with the chapel to its right holding a Madonna by Fra Paolino and a rare original 16th-century majolica floor. The elevated garden, once a vegetable plot, has geometric beds restored in 1975-1981 and a medicinal "orto dei semplici".

The Archivio Vasariano holds 17 autograph letters from Michelangelo to "caro amico Giorgio Vasari", with three autograph sonnets and three original drawings by Michelangelo. This private documentary collection, including contract books and correspondence, is among the most important of its kind for 16th-century art history.