VILLA 
BONDI, 
FLORENCE. 
HE Villa of Garofano in Camerata, to call 
it by its medieval name, stands on the old 
road to Fiesole. Not the grand, new, 
winding vale, up which tourists flock and 
tramlines grind; a small, modest road between 
dun-coloured walls leads up to the gateway, with 
its simple columns and good old ironwork, but at 
the back of the villa is a still narrower road, 
hardly more than a track, and this is probably the 
way by which the Court painter, Cimabue, rode, 
to find and bring back a shepherd boy from the 
hills beyond Fiesole ; and, more memorable still, 
it must often have known the feet of Dante, for 
this was the home of his later life in Florence, 
and belonged to him at the time of his banish- 
ment. The first notice we have of the villa is in 
an instruction of May 16th, 1332, by Ser Saldi 
Dini (an ancestor, we may take it, of that 
Agostino Dini who long after built Villa Collazzi). 
He portions out land between Piero and Jacopo, sons 
of the dead poet, and their uncle, Francesco 
Alighieri, and specifies the confines “which run 
along the public road.” 
The sons made over the villa to their uncle, 
to reimburse him for the loan of 205 golden 
florins lent to their unhappy father in two loans, 
March 14th and June and, 1300. Francesco 
Alighieri sold his newly-acquired possession at once, 
and the purchasers were Giovanni and Accerito 
Portinari, nephews of that Bice who was the 
inspiration of the divine poet. When, by a decree 
of the Duca de Atene, the act of confiscation 
against Dante was annulled and all other possessions 
restored to his heirs, the legal sale of this villa was 
allowed to stand. 
In 1427 we find that Bernardo di Giovanni 
Portinari, nephew of Giovanni, the buyer, 
possessed, among his other estates, a farm called 
Garofano, with “a good gentleman’s house” on 
it, situated in Camerata, in the abbey of 
Fiesole, and in the parish of San Bartolommeo. 
The boundaries have become somewhat changed, 
owing to deviations in the course of the torrential 
river, Mugrone, and we find it sometimes described 
as in the parish of San Marco, or even in that of 
San Gervasio; but this was the only piece of land 
owned by the Portinari in Camerata. Names of 
villas always change at the caprice of their owners, 
and later we find it denominated Como. Portinari 
sold the villa to his cousin, Giovanni di Guatteri, 
and his wife, Francesca Strozzi, and they sold it 
back to the Portinari in 1454. It remained in this 
family till 1507, and then passed through several 
other hands. Duke Salviati bought it in 1738, 
and then again it had various owners for short 
periods; but every transfer is recorded, and we 
have the utmost certainty that this was really 
Dante’s house. The shield of the Portinari is 
carved on a wall not later than the second half 
of the fourteenth century. At the time Salviati 
bought it it is entered in the city annals as “a 
villa in Camerata,’ which must have been that 
of Dante, bought by the Portinari family. 
It is worth while tracing its history minutely, 
because so much of the old house still retains its 
original aspect. In the centre is a small open 
cortile, with slender columns, which support an 
upper corridor running all round, with broad 
eaves and open to the air; from this open the 
bedrooms, one of which goes by the name of 
“Dante’s room,” and may, indeed, well have 
been that of the master of the house. Its windows 
lead out on to a loggia, from which there is a 
view over Florence, and it is hardly going too 
far to assume that when the exile’s thoughts 
turned back to his beloved city he must often 
have pictured it as it looked from the loggia of 
this, his own sweet home. It is one of the most 
perfect views, looking off to Vallombrosa on the 
one hand, and towards the mountain on which 
stands the village of Incontro, where tradition says 
that St. Francis and St. Dominic met, and on the 
other to where the sharp shafts of the Carrara 
mountains stand out against the horizon. 
The villa now belongs to Signor Bondi, 
whose beautiful copies of antique marbles and 
terra-cottas in Signa earth are so well known to 
travellers in Italy. Italians are beginning to 
develop a love for horticulture, and Signor Bondi 
has a gardener who takes prizes at many of the 
great shows at Turin and elsewhere. The enclosure 
round the pavilion is a blaze of colour, and there 
are some splendid aloes, plants of over thirty years, 
and which may live for another twenty years. 
Some people are inclined to take exception to masses 
of flowers in old Italian gardens as being an inno- 
vation ; but nowadays we must have flowers ; and as 
one drives away from Villa Bondi with one’s hands 
full of carnations and scented verbena, it is an 
innovation which may be regarded leniently. 
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