GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO has also gone down in history for his numerous lovers. If you pass on Lake Garda, take a trip to the Vittoriale, its famous villa (including a theater, where now every summer there is a large program of Music and Theater), where you will also find a separate museum where, in addition to its dresses, the wonderful letters he wrote to his lovers are collected.
Near Petrognano, a fraction of Arezzo, there is one of the most impressive and rich in history of the Arezzo area: Villa Mancini.
Here, on the estate of her husband Count Lorenzo, producer (and great consumer) of wine, Gabriele D'Annunzio met Mrs. Giuseppina Mancini, born Giorgi of not noble Romagna. She was thirty-five, eight years younger than him.
The reconstruction of the correspondence between the two lovers testifies to how that love was one of the most intense lived by d'Annunzio, and was never forgotten. This is confirmed by the temporal duration of the correspondence which, with the exception of the one with Maria Hardouin of Gallese, is the longest-running of all his love correspondences, but also one of the most important on an artistic and biographical level.
To conquer his virtue it took him a year in a tight court and with his proverbial manner he first hesitated and then dropped the woman into his arms. He finally snatched the "great gift" from him on the night of February 11, 1907, in the rooms of the Capponcina a "foggy and soft evening", lit by an embrace destined to remain legendary and unmatched in the memory of both, so much so that that number eleven will become magical for D 'Annunzio: on the same day, eleven years later, he will pilot Buccari's Mas of the adventure with her in mind; on the same day, thirty-one years later, close to death, he will recall those "sweet and tearing memories, my last happiness".
Around here everything is pervaded by history. In fact, the building is located a short distance from the Arno, in the area where, according to Dante Alighieri, the river denies its gaze to the people of Arezzo (botoli then finds, coming down, growling more than he asks for it, and from them disdainful twists the muzzle - Canto XIV Purgatorio).
As you can see from the photos, the building is spread over four levels and is surmounted by a curved and asymmetrical roof terrace with respect to the large rectangular body of the building, originally equipped with a clock. At the top there is an elegant tympanum. The beautiful ashlar of the portal and the eight windows on the ground floor stand out on the façade.
To the right of the villa, attached to it, there is a small oratory which was declared suitable for celebrations in 1896, while the stables are located on the back of the house, marked by medallions depicting horse heads. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the building was adorned with the beautiful park that is now neglected.
GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO affectionately called the noblewoman Amaranta and Amaranta is the name of the protagonist of Pieraccioni's film IL PARADISO ALL'IMPROVVISO. Pieraccioni shot IL CICLONE in these areas with Lorena Forteza, I am sure that the name Amaranta was inspired by this page of history.