2 88 



THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

 VILLA BONDI AND VILLA PALMIERI, FLORENCE. 



THE Villa of Garofano in Camerata, to call it by its mediaeval, name, stands on the old 

 road to Fiesole. A small, modest road between dim-coloured walls leads up to the 

 gateway, with its simple columns and ancient 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. More memorable still, this older road must often have known the feet of Dante, for this 

 was the home of his later life in Florence, and the villa belonged to him at the time of his 

 banishment. The first notice we have of the villa is in an instruction of May i6th, 1332, by 

 Ser Saldi Dini (an ancestor, we may take it, of that Agostino Dini who long after built Villa 

 Collazxi). 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 two hundred 

 and five golden florins lent to their unhappy father in two loans, March i4th and June 2nd, 



301. THE WELL IN THE CORTILE OF THE VILLA BONDI, FLORENCE. 



