Pinocchio villa for sale at £8.8m near Florence

The house's gardens feature in Carlo Collodi's 'The Adventures of Pinocchio'

The Villa di Colonnata, which inspired Pinocchio author Carlo Collodi, is on the market for £8.8m (Getty Images/AFP)

A house that inspired Pinocchio author Carlo Collodi is on the market for £8.8 million (10.5 million euros).

The 3,000 square metre villa in the outskirts of Florence is a world away from the humble workshop where carpenter Geppetto’s marionette is born in the book.

The Villa di Colonnata has seven acres of land, known as the “Field of Miracles”, which features in The Adventures of Pinocchio when a gardener famously finds a hoard of coins.

Collodi lived near the villa in Sesto Fiorentino, where his brother worked at a local porcelain manufacturing plant.

Several other local sites also feature in the book, including a fomer taven referred to as the ‘Land of the Barn Owls’, a nickname given to porcelain workers because of the dust they were covered in.

Only a few diehard Pinocchio fans have come to visit the house so far, according to local historian Giuseppe Garbarino, who hoped the house would be bought by someone with connections to the book.

The Adventures of Pinocchio was written in installments in a children’s journal between 1881 and 1883, and tells the story of a carpenter who fashions a wooden boy marionette out of a walking stick.

The book was adapted into an animated musical film by Walt Disney in 1940, which won two Academy Awards.

The wooden puppet Pinocchio is best-known for his extending nose, which grows every time he tells a lie.