The Victorian period saw a large growth in urban development, resulting in overpopulated, dirty, and diverse conditions in cities; these conditions were seen as decadent, and so the architectural designs of the times were envisioned to be outside of the city. Domestic architecture of the Victorian era reflected a new set of values brought about with the end of the Renaissance, one of these being the appreciation of segregation, privacy, and reduced social contact. Victorian architecture began to involve creating particular interior spaces, the three main functional zones were private (for intimate family functions), service (for work and service) and social or living spaces (for family life and guests). The parlours of the renaissance were replaced with living spaces, reflecting the emphasis on intra family relationships over social interactions with outsiders. In Italy, the early 19th century saw post unification architecture and attitudes towards the need to make the new reality of a united country evident, this is seen in the construction of the Piazza della Repubblica. This chapter of the novel includes a large amount of architectural language and description, and reflects the significance of places and private settings in this period.

Daniela del Pesco, The Italian Renaissance in the Nineteenth Century. Revision, Revival and Return, 2019, Glasgow: Journal of Art Historiography

Peiman Amini Behbahani, A syntactical comparative analysis of the spatial properties of Prairie style and Victorian domestic architecture, 2016, Routledge

The Roman gate of Florence was built in 1326 as a part of the outer city walls of Florence, and is located at the route from Florence to Rome. During 1285-1340, the citizens of Florence erected a wall around the city for protection, as it was vulnerable to attack from Bologna and Rome. Much of the wall was torn down over the centuries in urban expansion, but segments of the wall and the Porta Romana were preserved, as the south bank of the region of Arno is not ideal for urban growth. Henry James stayed in Florence for 8 months during the 1870’s, at the Villa Brichieri-Colombi in Bellosguardo, in the same town and a few streets away from the Porta Romana mentioned in this chapter. Italy was a lifelong passion of Henry James’, where he visited annually for almost 40 years after settling in England. Florence and the Italian backdrop are a common theme in many of his novels, seen in James’ first book Roderick Hudson (1875), as well as Daisy Miller (1879) and The Wings of the Dove (1902), all written in Florence. Osmond's house in the novel is situated outside of the Roman gate of Florence.

Deirdre Pirro, Henry James, 2012, The Florentine

Roslyn Jolly, Henry James in Context: Travel and Tourism, 2012, pages 343-353

Umberto Mariani, The Italian Experience of Henry James, 1964, Nineteenth-Century Fiction Vol. 19, No. 3, pages 237-254

Victorian fashion accessories accentuated the significance of the female body, namely the hands, face and head, and were important in a Victorian woman’s experience of gender and class; one of these accessories is the glove. A glove was an object of refinement, class, elegance and luxury; they were worn by Queen Charlotte at the time, and also by the dandy “beau” Brummell. The belief that the moral character of a woman could be perceived through her body, and read by others, was upheld in Europe during the 1800’s, and meant that gloves acted not only as protection from the elements, but also from having their class status read from the condition of their hand. Hands were a symbol of class and gender in the Victorian era, with the white, delicate hand of the middle class expressing minimum manual labour, and being idealised above that of the working class or aristocracy. With the accessory of gloves came a series of rules and etiquette to follow, with much attention being given to the condition of one's hands and gloves. This is seen as Madame Merle examines Pansy’s hand through this lens.

Geri Walton, Glove Etiquette and Rules in the 1800s, 2014, Unique histories from the 18th and 19th centuries

Ariel Beaujot, The Beauty of Her Hands: The Glove and the Making of Middle class Womanhood, 2012, Bloomsbury Publishing

The word piazza translates to square, and refers to an opening in a city, serving as a social centre for retail, government, commercial, religious and social activities. A piazza is a polyfunctional and fundamental element of an Italian city, and is often connected by streets to neighbouring piazzas and other sections of the city.. The Piazza has its roots immediately from 500 BC in the Roman forum, which were openings in cities situated between 2 main cross-streets. During the 13th century, Italian governments began putting aside funds for the constructions of public, designed spaces, and architecture, with the piazza as an integral part of urban design. Many large churches, law courts and city council offices required large piazzas beside them to accommodate for religious and public ceremonies. Henry James stayed in Florence for 8 months after falling ill, and stayed in Bellosguardo, where he was in close proximity to the Piazza di Bellosguardo. The house in which Osmond lives in the novel, is described to be situated with a front upon a rural piazza, in Florence.

Deirdre Pirro, Henry James, 2012, The Florentine

Richard Fusch, The Piazza in Italian Urban Morphology, 1994, Geographical Review Vol. 84, No. 4, pages 424-438