left Poggio Gherardo has towered over you, Poggio Gherardo where
the two first days of the _Decamerone_ were passed. How well Boccaccio
describes the place: "On the top of a hill there stood a palace which
was surrounded by beautiful gardens, delightful meadows, and cool
springs, and in the midst was a great and beautiful court with
galleries, halls, and rooms which were adorned with paintings...." Not
far away, Boccaccio himself lived on the podere of his father. You come
to it if you pass out of the Vincigliata road by a pathway down to
Frassignaja, a little stream which, in its hurry to reach Mensola, its
sister here, leaps sheer down the rocks in a tiny waterfall. This is the
"shady valley" perhaps where in the evening the ladies of the
_Decamerone_ walked "between steep rocks to a crystal brook which poured
down from a little hill, and there they splashed about with bare hands
and feet, and talked merrily with one another." Crossing this brook and
following the path round the hillside, where so often the nightingale
sings, you pass under a little villa by a stony way to Corbignano, and
there, in what may well be the oldest house in the place, at the end of
the street, past the miraculous orange tree, just where the hill turns
out of sight, you see Boccaccio's house, Casa di Boccaccio, as it is
written; and though the old tower has become a loggia, and much has been
rebuilt, you may still see the very ancient stones of the place jutting
into the lane, where the water sings so after the rain, and the olives
whisper softly all night long, and God walks always among the vines.

Turning then uphill, you come at last to a group of houses, and where
the way turns suddenly there is the Oratorio del Vannella, in the parish
of Settignano: it is truly just an old wayside tabernacle, but within is
one of the earliest works, a Madonna and Child, of Botticelli, whose
father had a podere hereabout. If you follow where the road leads, and
turn at last where you may, past the cemetery, you come to Settignano,
founded by Septimus Severus or by the Settimia family, it matters little
which, for its glory now lies with Desiderio the sculptor, who was born,
it seems, at Corbignano, and Antonio and Bernardo Rossellino, who were
born here. There is no other village near Florence that has so smiling a
face as Settignano among the gardens. There is little or nothing to see,
though the church of S. Maria has a lovely terra-cotta of Madonna wit