“He’s a woman hater? He can’t bear the sight of them? Poor fool! Probably he hasn’t found the one who knows how to handle him. But he shall find her, he shall! And who knows that he hasn’t found her. I’m going to insist with him.”

The description of the indomitable spirit of every woman given by Mirandolina, Goldoni’s Florentine Mistress of the Inn, at the end of the first act, lends itself well to telling the story of Eleonora, the mistress of Casa Botticelli, a small hotel in Piazza San Felice in Florence, which she manages with the passion and determination that is usually dedicated only to one’s secret refuge.

In the house, which was her home during her childhood, we met for breakfast in a room that before us had hosted the British breakfasts – perhaps based on porridge – of a famous heroine of our Risorgimento: the English poetess Elizabeth Barrett, together with her husband Robert Browning, who lived in this apartment in Palazzo Guidi from 1846. It is here that she wrote her perhaps most famous poem, Casa Guidi Windows, where she tells of the Italian Risorgimento as heard from a window in the Oltrarno neighborhood of Florence.

Today, Casa Botticelli is a small boutique hotel: eleven suites furnished with a mix of objects and works of art belonging to the house and its original inhabitants, as well as contemporary and design objects. You will be welcomed by Eleonora and her colleagues Roberta and Giacomo, expert connoisseurs of the reality of Florence. Eleonora insists on everything being perfect!