Niccolò Machiavelli

📍Albergaccio, Via Scopeti 64, 50026 Sant'Andrea in Percussina, Italy

“I grew up in Florence, where my father, a lawyer of modest means, loved books and taught me to love the Roman historians. For fourteen years I served the Florentine republic as a secretary and diplomat. When the Medici returned in 1512, I was dismissed, suspected of conspiracy, imprisoned and tortured, then released — and in 1513 I retreated to my family's farm at Sant'Andrea in Percussina, in the hills south of Florence, from where I could just see the cathedral dome. In December of that year I wrote to my friend Francesco Vettori describing my days: rising at dawn to snare thrushes, overseeing the woodcutters, reading Dante and Petrarch by a spring, then crossing the road to the inn, the Albergaccio, to play cards and argue with the butcher, the miller and the kiln-men. In the evening I came home, took off my muddy clothes, put on courtly robes, and entered my study to converse with the great men of antiquity. That is how I wrote The Prince. My house and the inn still stand, and the cellars below them are linked by an old tunnel.”

Sources: Wikipedia: House of Machiavelli casedellamemoria.it letteraturaitalia.it