Villa I Tatti

Harvard has a research center which focuses mostly on Italian renaissance studies, but is really for anything Italy related. It happens that this place, the Villa I Tatti, is just outside of Florence (less than 20 minutes by bus) and I was lucky enough to find out about it and to be allowed to visit and go on a tour.

The area was unbelievably beautiful, and it was hard to believe that it was so close to the city! I was entranced by the bright colors in the ivy lining a house on the main road, and the walk up the hill to the villa was equally beautiful and pastoral:

 You tour the villa itself because it has a historically significant garden, as well as a spectacular collection of Byzantine art. I arrived early and met a grad student there who is studying there for the semester; besides him and one other grad student there are 15 post-doctoral fellows. He and I are going to do dinner sometime. Hooray for more friends!

The gardens were absolutely lovely. There were lots of plants around with lovely scents, including lemon trees at almost every corner, and so you were not only visually engaged in the garden but olfactory-ally as well. The way the garden was designed meant that around every corner there was a surprise. While the garden pictured here is lovely, can you see through the archway? That archway is for the limoneria, a barn for storing lemon trees through the winter, and as you pass through it there are a huge set of stairs dropping down into a completely different style of garden. Let me zoom in for you:

You see? Totally different garden around the corner. It was really lovely, and I got to enjoy the tour in the company of Charlie and Susan, friends of my family who live around the corner from us in Chicago. Our tour guide was also named Susan. Oh, the coincidences!

The art collection was lovely, but you'll have to go to I Tatti's website for more info on it, as I wasn't allowed to take pictures and can't remember much about it anyway. But it was a beautiful mansion, though it felt more like a few rooms connected to a lot of library (which we weren't allowed into, sadly). The research center was wonderfully relaxing, and definitely felt more like Italy than Harvard, though I imagine things would be different if I had seen people getting work done.

After the tour I got to stay for tea, which was done in a proper British style and was really lovely and fun. I got to talk with Susan the guide some more and met one of the other people who works there who I had been in contact with to arrange the tour. We discussed the differences between the Villa and the American Academy in Rome, and conversed about life in Italy for expats. I thought it was a lovely place, surrounded by lovely countryside (and some 80 acres of grape and olive farms, or something like that), and had a very academic air to it. How beautiful!