Out of Florence is Harry Brewster’s warm and evocative portrait of life at San Francesco di Paola, a medieval former convent. It was here that his grandfather, the sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand, lived and worked and created a center of European culture where such visitors as Richard and Cosima Wagner, Clara Schumann, Ethel Smythe, Henry James, William Ewart Gladstone, and Bernard Berenson came and went. The memory of his family home has been a constant companion to the author during a life spent traveling extensively. Here he muses not only on the exotic locations he has visited, but also on his great pleasure in returning home.