Minchiate is an early 16th century card game, originating in Florence, Italy. It is no longer widely played. Minchiate can also refer to the special deck of 97 playing cards used in the game. The deck is closely related to the tarot cards, but contains an expanded suit of trumps. The game was similar to but more complex than tarocchi.
The Minchiate deck consists of 97 cards. Like in other Tarot decks, there are 4 suits of 14 cards each, but unlike any other game, Minchiate features 40 trumps (“Tarocchi”) and the Fool (“Matto”) is not a trump but plays a special role which will be described later. Read more The Minchiate Tarot deck ›