H ouse and Garden 
THE LONG VASCA 
street. Once a year these doors stand wide 
open and he who wills may walk through 
and into the garden beyond. That is on 
the second of June, Corpus Domini Day, 
when by the rights and privileges of custom, 
the Holy Procession (and in its wake most 
of the inhabitants of Sesto), after leaving the 
church, follows the road till it reaches the 
Villa Corsi-Salviati, enters the open gates, 
wanders round the garden, rests for prayer 
in the beautiful chapel and then goes its way, 
visiting this and that place, till its prescribed 
route takes it back to the church of Sesto. 
On that day beautiful brocades, which have 
served no other purpose since they were 
woven over two hundred years ago, hang out 
of every window of the villa. Corpus Domini 
is one of the many picturesque religious festi¬ 
vals by which the life of the poorest Italian 
is redeemed from the monotonous drudgery 
to which the northern poor are condemned. 
The wonderful thing is that it should be 
possible to open so beautiful a garden as that 
of the villa, to the whole population of a 
town, without the liberty being abused. But 
so it is, and so we believe could it be only in 
Tuscany. 
At different dates the villa has been 
flanked by buildings such as, to the east, a 
very long conservatory ending with the 
gardener’s house, built in 1865, as a tablet 
informs one, by Marchese Francesco Corsi- 
Salviati — and to the west by stables, farm 
buildings and the fattoria , running altogether 
a length of 270 yards. Of the conservatory 
nothing can be seen from the road, on which 
side it only appears as a long wall orna¬ 
mented by painted sham windows, a very 
common device in Italy, until these windows 
become real in the gardener’s house. 
From the garden these buildings do not 
form part of the villa, which stands forward 
alone, the rest falling back. The windows 
on the garden side are so much closer to¬ 
gether that they leave no space for further 
decoration, which is reserved for the roof, 
round which runs the terrace, with the same 
balustrade ornamented with the same urns 
and obelisks, except where two loggias crown 
the ends of the facade. These are supported 
on four columns, the center ones being 
arched over to form a frame for a statue. 
Two more statues stand on the roof of each 
ioggia. 
