28 (S 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
VILLA BONDI AND VILLA PALMIERI, FLORENCE. 
T he 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 Pdorence, 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 Mav i6th, 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 two hundred 
and five golden florins lent to their unhappy father in two loans, March 14th and June 2nd, 
301.— THE WELL IN THE CORTILE OF THE VILLA BONDI, FLORENCE. 
