VILLA CAPPONI, 
FLORENCE. 
O one who knows the environs of Florence 
can fail to be struck by the enormous 
number of old villas which cluster upon 
all her hills for many miles round. The 
love of Italians for country life has, indeed, always 
been intense. It has been pointed out that in 
Northern countries the nobles lived in their fortified 
castles, monks in well-guarded convents, and even 
the wealthiest burghers from one year’s end to 
another in the cities; but in Italy the passion for 
country life was so strong, that men were willing 
to run immense risk in order to gratify it. Thus 
many a well-to-do citizen aspired to have his villa, 
or country house. This precious inheritance of 
the old Roman world was revived, and the villa 
became the best-loved possession upon which all 
expenditure was lavished, 
The old Tuscan nobleman Pandolfini, in his 
“ Governo,” a sort of manual of advice to a son, 
written in the fifteenth century, speaks of the 
wealth of delightful sites round Florence, ‘in 
crystal air,” with beautiful views, soft winds, good 
water. “Let us seek one,’ he says, ‘“ which 
affords, above all, the necessaries of life; bread, 
wine, oil, wood: take up a load of salt to last the 
family for a year and see that a road is made 
passing near.” 
All other modes of life he holds to be full 
of difficulty, and other possessions entail danger and 
disappointment ; but to live on a villa or farm is to 
live where all is kind and gracious, and love and 
satisfaction in it are sure to increase. ‘In the 
spring the villa gives you flowers and verdure, 
birds sing and all is gay. You look forward to a 
laughing harvest. And how generous the land is, 
sending you one fruit after another so that the 
house is never empty. In the autumn, what 
unwearying store of fruit, rendering tenfold of its 
willing abundance. Filling the house in winter 
with grapes, nuts, figs, apples, and almonds. It 
sends wood, oil, laurel, and juniper, so that safe 
from snow and wind, the fire may be gay with 
scented flames. . It ought to be the refuge 
for good men, for the just and honest. It ought 
to be pleasantly spacious, so as to afford bird- 
catching, hunting, and fishing at the proper seasons. 
All live honestly, openly, in the light of day, there 
“cc 
is no occasion for litigation and contention, no hatred 
or malevolence. You gaze on frowning hills and 
happy plains and fountains and streams leaping 
in the meadows and taste the delight of fleeing 
from the tumult of the city, the piazza, and the 
palace, and from all the injustice, the dishonesty 
and display of a crowd. In the city are finer 
buildings, refinement and taste, fame and glory, but 
in the villa, quiet, content of soul, liberty to live 
without worry and in steady health.” 
“Tn villas such as these,” says John Addington 
Symonds, “or in those on the Brenta, on the 
Lombard hills at Posilippo, or on the Vomero, 
social life assumed a freer and more rural character, 
and we meet with charming descriptions of the 
intercourse of the guests, the hunting parties and 
all the open-air pursuits and amusements, while the 
noblest achievements of poetry and thought are 
sometimes dated from these scenes of rural peace.” 
Villa Capponi, standing on the hill above San 
Miniato, is a good example of an old fortified 
house’ which once belonged to the family of 
the Accoramboni, and about 1680 came into the 
hands of a member of the honoured house of 
Capponi. It was converted into a seventeenth- 
century residence, and is now one of the most 
charming English homes to be found upon the 
Tuscan hills. Its spacious, stone-flagged loggia 
looks down upon the distant city, and the garden, 
though small, is planned to the greatest advantage, 
and is a dream of beauty in the spring-time. A 
long strip of fine velvety turf on the east side, 
bordered by cypress hedges, is a survival of the 
old garden. The ground adjoining has been laid 
out with great taste, divided by beautiful walls 
of close-shaved green box and cypress, and an old 
iron gateway makes a delicious picture when 
the tulips crowd at the foot and banksia 
roses riot above. A very interesting feature 
of Villa Capponi is afforded by its high garden 
walls, in smooth tawny plaster, built in bold 
curves and volutes and pedestals, each pedestal 
crowned with an urn-shaped vase in which 
geraniums flourish as they can do in Italy. These 
seventeenth century walls make a nuost graceful 
setting, broken as their lines are by sumptuous 
curtains of richly-flowering roses. 
