But, what of the woman who locked herself away in this fine room? In order to discover more about her, I contacted Horace Gibson. He told me that Dr. Edith Farnsworth was a Chicago paediatrician who had a bit of money because her grandfather invented ‘fairy soap’, the first soap to float. She had an affair with Mies van der Rohe, the famous architect, and commissioned him to build what is considered by many to be one of the most famous houses in the US: the Farnsworth Villa, now a museum owned by the state of Illinois. Dr. Farnsworth didn't like it and costs soared, so they sued each other, which I assume did little to advance their affair! She was a linguist who translated the poetry of the Nobel Prize-winner Eugenio Montale into English and French. She came to Florence hoping, presumably, that Montale would live with her in the villa, which she purchased. He didn't, and she spent her remaining days there as a recluse, in much the same way, I imagine, as Queen Victoria in the years following the death of Prince Albert.”

          Every day, when I set foot in the cortile and looked to the far corner where the music room was situated, I thought of Dr. Farnsworth and of her remaining days at Le Tavernule. They must have been days of intense loneliness and of isolation but also of great beauty and stillness.

At one end of cortile, below the tower, was an old ornamental well, not unlike the wishing well of yesteryear and which was once in use, so I’m told, when the villa was a private home. The well had long been filled in to protect the children who now attend school in the property but the base and the brickwork remain. For some reason, stories about a small girl falling down the well and drowning many, many years ago, well before it was a school, were discussed every time someone mentioned the ghosts and hauntings associated with the villa and its long history.

          I had often stayed alone at the villa and even on the darkest evenings with deafening thunder offering an atmospheric backdrop, I never felt threatened, but there was a night when I experienced something quite strange and unnerving: something that worried me considerably, of which more later in the story.