Italy -- Memories Of People Are Best Souvenirs

FLORENCE, Italy - When I picture Tuscany, I see faces.

The buildings, the monuments, of course, are there. But the people are in the foreground.

People like Livi, the concierge at the Hotel Mona Lisa in Florence.

A man of modest height and middle age, he was sitting at the front desk the afternoon my wife and I arrived in the city. He wore a mustache, a sly smile and, like everyone else in Italy, it seemed, was smoking a cigarette.

We were still reeling from the bumpy trans-Atlantic flight and our first dose of culture shock when we checked in, using a Berlitz crash course in traveler's Italian. Livi appraised us with a calculating squint.

The hotel came highly recommended by guidebooks and friends. And looking around at the charming sitting rooms and intimate courtyards, it appeared well worth the splurge price (even by Italian standards) of $200 a night.

Until, that is, we saw our room. It was a cramped little box. Not the room with a view we'd imagined. On the narrow street below us, motorbikes roared incessantly.

We turned to Livi for salvation. Rolling his eyes, he informed us that nothing else would be available that night.

The next morning Livi announced that he had moved us to another room.

This one was on the ground floor, facing a small, little-traveled courtyard. Bigger, far more interesting and inviting, it was also blissfully peaceful.

We loved it. Relieved, we thanked him profusely.

Twirling his cigarette between his fingers, Livi smiled broadly, took a long, satisfied puff and in a grand, gravelly voice, said, "Sometimes you have to go through hell before you get to paradise."

A few nights later a waiter at Garga, a small, stylish and all-around splendid restaurant on Via del Moro in Florence, made a similar, lasting impression.

Young, handsome, his blond hair tied back into a haphazard ponytail, he seemed in as much demand as anything on the menu.

But more than the meal - which amounted to a culinary epiphany - I remember the mood, the energy and enthusiasm of the diners, the glow that seemed to come from all that wonderful food and wine. And in the center of it all, our waiter.

By the time our all-too-short, three-hour dinner drew to a close, he was like an old friend. So I jokingly asked him why an attractive young woman nearby had received two cheesecakes - both topped with fresh berries - when I'd only received one, delicious but unadorned.

With a dramatic flourish, he took her face in his hands, turned it toward me and replied, "Look at this face!"

But it was at Belvedere, a 300-year-old villa some 15 miles southeast of Florence, that I discovered Italy in the face and soul of an 85-year-old man named Eugenio Signorini.

With his wife, Maria Renata Alamanni, Signorini is the proprietor-caretaker of the villa that sits above Castelfranco di Sopra.

We had been warned that going to Belvedere - a former Medici summer home - would pose one small problem.

"You have to pack a bunch of extra hankies," said our rental agent Daniel Morneau, "because the Signorinis are such wonderful people, you'll just cry like a baby when you have to leave."

The afternoon we arrived at Belvedere, a 40-acre property of terraced vineyards and stunning panoramic views, Signorini was sitting near the small closet of a shop where table wines, oils, honeys and jams produced at Belvedere are sold.

A dapper little man with a fondness for ascots, berets and - I soon discovered - conversation, Signorini was watching the sun go down. I realized later he relished such meetings. He was animated, interested, with an impish wit.

We began to talk at length about anything and everything.

I told him I was a writer, and he told me that Alice Walker had spent time writing at Belvedere. We talked about art, international politics, culture.

We stayed a week at Belvedere. It rained on and off for at least four of those days. "The sun, it will arrive," promised our host. It didn't, but that just gave Signorini and me more time to talk.

We took several day trips from Belvedere: to Siena, Radda in Chianti, San Gimignano and nearby Loro Ciuffena.

Still, much of what stands out in my mind comes back to Signorini - how he told my wife that the curls in her hair reminded him of a Fra Angelico painting, or, interrupting one of our many chats, how he reached into my own hair to free a butterfly.

Then it came time to leave.

Signorini handed me a present of two bottles of Belvedere wine, he said he hoped I would return next year. "I'm an old man," he reminded me and said he wasn't sure he would live long enough to greet me again.

He kissed me on one cheek and then the other.

"Now go," he said.

The rental agent was right. I cried.