House and Garden 
THE PLAN OF THE GROUNDS 
Especially measured and drawn for House and Garden 
line of balustrade, one of the architectural 
beauties of the garden. From these to its 
farther end the terrace is supported by a 
wall, a fine piece of strong masonry. As 
the hill gets steeper, the wall grows higher 
until, at its western end, it stands out in a 
bold angle reminding one of the ramparts of 
many a fortified castello not far off. It may 
be interesting to mention that a castello in 
the Italian sense did not necessarily mean a 
castle in the English sense. In early days 
it signified a group of houses, generally 
inhabited by members of one family, but 
sometimes by others, and surrounded for 
protection by walls or ramparts. “ Montegu- 
fone,” the home of the now extinct family of 
the Acciaioli, is an instance. Later on it was 
turned into a magnificent villa and has now, 
alas ! returned to its primitive use and har¬ 
bors in tenements, whose gateways bear the 
shield of Anjou,families upon families, not Ac¬ 
ciaioli, who earn their living by plaiting straw. 
But to return to the Villa Campi. Of the 
house, as it now stands, there is little to be 
said. A grand villa had been planned and 
the architect’s designs still exist. Why it 
was never built, we do not know. It is a 
contradiction to the usual rule in Italian six¬ 
teenth century villas, where the house was 
thought of first and the garden afterwards,— 
in most cases a formal thing of beds and 
fountains enclosed within walls. Villa Campi, 
as it is now, consists of an oblong stucco- 
covered building, without any ornament what¬ 
soever. If not beautiful in itself, however, 
it is surrounded by much beauty : the love¬ 
liness of its own gardens, and beyond them, 
the glorious view, over pine-covered hills, to 
the blue mountains, with a glimpse of the roof 
of “Artimino,” that grand villa that Ber¬ 
nardo Buontalenti built for Duke Ferdinand 
I. and which now belongs to the Passerini. 
Villa Campi is indeed uninhabited, and al¬ 
though one wonders at this fact, one can but 
hope the day may be far off when some enter¬ 
prising owner shall think it desirable to put 
his property in order. It will be desecration. 
Those lichen-covered statues, those ancient 
trees, those sleeping fountains, should pass their 
allotted span of existence in solitudeandsilence. 
It was fitting that the gardener who lives 
there should not be able to tell me the name 
of the present owner. He thought the place 
still belonged to the Pucci ! And what 
mattered it to him? The spirit of the place 
possessed him. The owner might change, 
but the villa remained the same, a thing not 
of the present but of the past. 
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