Florence at 50

When Ermelinda Campani heard that nearly 400 alumni and guests would gather in Florence this June to celebrate Stanford in Italy's 50th anniversary, the longtime program director was delighted but not surprised. "Alumni come and knock on our door all the time," she says by phone from her office overlooking the Arno River. "This program has a great family around it."

Alums return again and again, she says, bringing their families or as part of mini-reunions, whether it's a milestone year like this one, or not. As she points out, the Breyer Center in Florence is the only Stanford overseas study program to remain in the same city since its founding. It also has attracted the most students: 5,000 and counting. "They bonded among themselves but they also bonded with the city and the program."

Opened with considerable fanfare in September 1960, Stanford's first Italian program was located in the Villa San Paolo, a tile-roofed enclave nestled in the Fiesole hills. The 80-bed property was owned and operated by the Congregation of the Barnabiti, a Catholic teaching order that conducted a school for boys across the street.

At the time, founding director Giuseppe Mammarella was a 30-year-old political scientist teaching at the University of Florence, not much older than his high-spirited American charges. "The relations inside the classroom were typical of student-teacher interactions. But outside the classroom we were all friends," he recalls. "We traveled together with the students. We ate with them."

In 1973 Stanford moved the program to more prestigious digs at the Villa Salviatino, a 14th-century hunting lodge transformed into a palatial estate by one of the most powerful families in Italy. Surrounded by vineyards, it was located about 30 minutes by bus from the city center. Then in 1988, seeking to cut costs and integrate students more closely with Florentine life, the University vacated the villa, downsized the program to around 40 students per quarter, and set up classroom and administrative space on the banks of the Arno, opposite the Uffizi Gallery.

Today students live with Italian families, and the focus is less on tourism and more on honors theses, internships and public service. One thing that hasn't changed, though, is the deep affection Stanford alumni hold for Firenze. "Whether you were enjoying a bomba mista at Settimo's bar or just walking the villa gardens, it was a magical experience," says Julia Hartung, '82, of her six-month stay.

For Ron Spogli, '70, the Florence program provided a return to his roots. All four of his grandparents were Italian immigrants, but before attending Stanford in Italy, he had never been abroad. "Back in the days before low-cost travel, it was probably the only way that most of us ever could have seen Europe," he notes. "For me, it was an opportunity to be introduced to a whole cultural milieu that was part of my family's past but not readily accessible."

Spogli, who served as U.S. ambassador to Italy from 2005 to 2009, was among several Florence alumni and faculty slated to speak at the anniversary celebration June 20 to 22. Other planned activities, funded primarily by participants, included a welcome by the mayor, a keynote address by President Emeritus Gerhard Casper at the Palazzo Vecchio, walking tours of the city and surrounding countryside, visits to the old villas, and a dinner reception hosted by Helen and Peter Bing, '55, at the Grand Hotel on the Piazza Ognissanti. That's the place where Leland Stanford Junior died—and, in a way, started it all.

—Theresa Johnston, '83