Unnumbered pageScan 124 of 125
Printed: GRAND HÔTEL-VENEZIA
Handwritten: June 23, 1935
Dear Mr. Hill,
I left my family at Florence yesterday and am here just for a day en route to Munich. I am flying tomorrow morning. It is only two hours by air. I had a very pleasant time at Florence at my family's villa which I think is one of the most beautiful houses I have ever seen. It is on one of the slopes of Fiesole and commands a wonderful view. It was built in the 15th Century. It belonged to the Palmieri family who financed Galileo and built him his tower from which he made his heretical views of the universe. the tower is still used as an observatory, and the villa still contributes to the fund to keep it going. It is said that it was at the Villa Palmieri that Boccaccio wrote the Decameron during the plague at Florence. He writes of the place somewhere in the Decameron and says that if Heaven were anything like it he couldn't ask for anything better, and neither could I. I feel very fit after my stay there and think I must have put on some weight. I am meeting a friend of mine in Munich and expect to stay there or in Austria, probably Salzbourg on account of the music, if I can persuade him to leave Munich which I think a rather dull place. Nikita has finally broken his long silence. He is trying to wrest an Italian visee out of the Consul at Rotterdam in order to return to
65 figures hard to readstruck struck outadded written in above” jug ditto, and what it repeatsword reading not certain