Villa Calamai, Colli Alti, Italy

This very special love story described by author Edmund Burke O'Connell in The Last Farewell - A Journey of the Heart unfolds in the small Italian village of Colli Alti in Tuscany, near the Florence-Pistoia road that runs into the Apennine Mountains straddling Highway 65 above Florence.

Army Signal Corps photographers Edmund Burke O’Connell and John T. Mason used the Villa Calamai as temporary field living quarters during the spring and fall of 1944, after being welcomed there by Tina Calamai, the daughter of its owner and her family. The villa had been occupied by German forces prior to the Allied liberation of Florence, Italy during the summer of 1944.

O’Connell describes the Villa Calamai as he first saw it during the summer of 1944 as a “large, rectangular-shaped structure featuring with large windows, corniced in a grey stone. The villa’s ground floor walls were laced with heavy iron grills that afforded the level of protection so desired by the affluent families of the Renaissance era.” The doors leading into the main garden were large, cathedral type, constructed in heavy oak that must have been twenty feet high. The downstairs rooms were immense, with heavy beamed oak ceilings characteristic of Tuscan country villas of the period.

 Post-War Images – Villa Calamai

The Villa Calamai served as the country home of Burke O’Connell and his post-war bride, Tina Calamai from the point of his return to Italy in early 1946 until her death in 1972 when he returned to the United States. The couple resided in a luxurious penthouse apartment located in nearby Livorno which served O’Connell while he worked as a senior civilian supply procurement specialist at Camp Darby until his retirement. His late wife Tina Calamai shared a similar love of oil painting with Burke, capturing the rich beauty of the villa’s interior furnishings and its handsome exterior in oils.

Click here to register a veteran with the WW II Memorial Registry! The memory of America's World War II generation is preserved within the physical memorial and through the World War II Registry of Remembrances, an individual listing of Americans who contributed to the war effort. Any U.S. citizen who helped win the war, whether a veteran or someone on the home front, is eligible for the Registry. Names in the Registry will be forever linked to the memorial's bronze and granite representations of their sacrifice and achievement.

Historical Resources