THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
259 
CHAPTER XX, 
FLORENTINE GARDENS AND VILLAS. INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
W HEN all the centres of interest in Italy have in turn been visited it will be strange 
if the traveller’s recollections do not settle upon Florence, living its strenuous 
life, crowded within the narrow limits of the plain of the Arno ; on the city 
ringed about with olive clad hillsides, dotted with the w’hite and brown villas 
characteristic of Tuscany. Here, if anywhere, we should find the simplicity of cultivated taste 
and that love of solid building which thinks beyond the lives of one century. In the true 
Tuscan villa the solid, vaulted ground floor is the factory of the farm, and all the work is there 
carried on which sustains the life lived on the Piano Nobile above. 
At the Villa dei Collazzi, illustrated later, are cellars and substructures of vast extent, the 
“ fattoria ” of the estate. The entrance is through a wide doorw'ay, adequate for ox carts to 
descend by a gentle slope. Here under the great vaults are two long rows of wine vats, each 
inscribed with the name of a “ podere,” or farm. The tall tubs of wood full of grapes come 
In stacked upon the carts, which are drawm by white oxen with red tassels dependent from 
heir horns. The grapes, first emptied into the vats, are then crushed by the feet or by wooden 
maces of the farm labourers. When fermented the wine is drawn oft and transferred to an 
272. — AT FLORENCE : SHELLEy’s VIEW. 
