The name of this whole district is Camerata, derived, says Salvini, from “camere” or deposits for water-conduits. Villani thinks Fiesole had two suburbs—Villa Arpina and Villa Camarti—the latter being the scattered village now called Camerata; but Boccaccio recounts that long before Fiesole was built or thought of, the forests which clothed the hills around were the favourite hunting-grounds of the fair goddess Diana. He describes her crinkly golden hair, tall, lithe figure, beautiful eyes and face “shining like the sun,” when in the month of May she met her nymphs—

“This,” writes Roberto Gherardi, “is the fountain now called Font’ all’ Erta, at the foot of Monte Ceceri looking due south, below the villa of the Signori Pitti-Gaddi; of which one can only now see some pieces of wall, and some ruins and vestiges in the public road at the beginning of the slope; but the people are still alive who assure me that about the year 1710 the course of the water which came from a tank a little above and from other springs near by, was deviated because it chilled the land below and damaged the crops of the podere. At the time of our Boccaccio I find that this podere with Houses, Tanks, &c., extending to the end of the plain of San Gervasio, was sold on the 5th June 1370 by Giovanni di Agostino degli Asini to Messer Bonifazio Lupo, Marquis of Soragona and a Knight of Parma, who at that time was admitted a citizen of Florence. Being moved by a spirit of much-to-be-praised piety and a feeling of gratitude towards the Florentine Republic, he obtained from the same on the 20th December 1377, as is stated by Ammirato in his XIII. book, permission to found the hospital in Via San Gallo of the said city, called precisely Bonifazio from the name of so pious a benefactor.”⁠[65]