In 1740 Roberto Gherardi wrote a long-winded but curious account of his own villa and of many others on the Fiesolean hills called _La Villeggiatura di Majano_. It has never been printed, but if for nothing else his MS. is valuable as suggesting that Giovanni Boccaccio was born near the banks of the Mensola. He writes, “... our celebrated master of Tuscan eloquence, Messer Giovanni di Boccaccio di Chellino da Certaldo, who in his earliest days, and afterwards in the flower of his youth passed much time in a small villa with a podere belonging to his father but a few paces below the hamlet of Corbignano, which podere on account of the rill dividing it which runs into the Mensola, and of the specified frontiers, and the two parishes San Martino a Mensola and Santa Maria a Settignano, in whose jurisdiction it lies, can only be, when you study it well, the villa of Signor Berti at Corbignano at present in the possession of Signor Ottavio Ruggeri, as can be verified by the contract of sale existing in the archives of Florence of the 18th May 1336 when our Boccaccio was twenty-three years old. I believe that under the guise of Ameto, Boccaccio tells us he was born among the neighbouring hills of Majano. In this forest Ameto, a wandering youth, used to visit the Fauns and Dryads who inhabited there; he, remembering that perhaps he was born in the neighbouring hills, was constrained thereto by a certain carnal love, and honoured them sometimes with pious offerings.” Villa Boccaccio was let out in small apartments to poor people for years; it now belongs to Mr Kenworthy Browne, and traces of ancient frescoes were found in some of the rooms when he restored it. [Illustration: (Drawing showing orchards on a hill, Villa is at top of the hill.)] As before said Poggio Gherardo is generally identified as the place Boccaccio had in his mind when he describes how on a Wednesday morning “as the day was breaking, the ladies with various of their serving-maids, and the three youths with three of their followers, left the town and went on their way; they had not gone more than two short miles from the city when they arrived at the place they had already decided on.[74] This said place was on a small height, removed a little distance from our roads on every side, full of various trees and shrubs in full greenery and most pleasant to behold. On the brow of the hill was a palace with a fine and spacious courtyard in the middle, and with loggie and halls and rooms, all, and each one in itself beautiful, and ornamented tastefully with jocund paintings; surrounded with grass plots and marvellous gardens, and with wells of coldest water, and cellars of rare wines; a thing more suited to curious topers than to sober and virtuous women.”