This is Villa Foscolo, among the Euganean Hills, in the southern part of the province of Padova. It's seen from the path on the opposite hill, leading to the former farmhouse where my friend Carla lives. The shot was taken just before sunset two weeks ago. On the left an olive-tree stump hit by a lightening many years ago. The enchanting landscape of the Euganean Hills has attracted and inspired generations of poets, writers and artists: from the Provençal troubadours, who gathered at the Estensi court in the 12th century, to the most important Italian and foreign writers of the past centuries such as Petrarca, Byron, Shelley, Foscolo, Fogazzaro and Bruce Chatwin. Actually the little town where my friends live is named Arquà Petrarca, from the 14th century poet who is buried here. Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827) was a Greece-born Venetian writer, revolutionary and poet. He took an active part in the stormy political discussions which the fall of the Republic of Venice had provoked, after Napoleon's invasion. Foscolo was a sympathizer of the French revolution, and had addressed an ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, expecting Napoleon to overthrow the Venetian oligarchy and create a free republic. The Treaty of Campoformio (17 October 1797), by which Napoleon handed Venice over to the Austrians, gave a rude shock to Foscolo, but did not quite destroy his hopes. The state of mind produced by that shock is reflected in his novel Ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis (The Last Letters of Jacopo Ortis) (1798), which was described by the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica as a more politicized version of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. Foscolo resided in the Euganean Hills during the last Days of the Venetian Republic, and wrote some of his first important literary works here, among them The Last Letters. Foscolo died in London in 1827, and his remains were brought to Florence in 1871, and buried in the Church of santa Croce, the Pantheon of the new Italy's glory. The glorification of Ugo Foscolo was part of the effort of the Italian government of this time - succesful in completing the Unification of Italy but at the cost of a head-in confrontation with the Catholic Church - to create a gallery of "secular saints" to compete with those of the Church and sway popular feeling in favor of the newly-created Italian state. Thank you for your kind comments.