To the hills!

Well, I'm still ill, but well enough today to more or less enjoy myself.

We took a bus up the hill, a little past the town of Fiesole to an old villa (well, 100 years old, but apparently not old by Italian standards) where the company Casallini Libri is housed. This company works with libraries all over the world to supply them with European publications.

After showing us around and telling us about what they do, they fed us a yummy lunch and then let us explore their gardens. Then we got to go up their tower for nice views of the city and the hills. It didn't take me long to decide that I'd be happy to work for them. :)










From there we went a little ways away to the villa of I Tatti. This is the villa once owned by Bernard Berenson, who was an art scholar in the late 19th-early 20th century. He basically pioneered the field of Italian Renaissance Art History. He was also an agent for American art collectors of the era, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, so we have him to thank for much of the Italian Renaissance art now in the U.S.

His villa is now owed by Harvard which operates a library and archive there for scholars....meaning that the only way you can see it or use their collections is if you have a PhD. I was happy to have the special chance to see the place. (I'd also be happy to get a job there too.)

Unfortunately, we weren't allowed in the actual villa itself (no one explained why), so we saw only the library, and we didn't get to see Berenson's supposedly amazing art collection. But the library was neat, and the gardens were gorgeous.