Umbria Camp is surrounded by woods and by the Villa Montesca park, home of Baroness Alice and Baron Leopoldo Franchetti. They transformed the gardens of the Villa into a proper botanical garden with various plants coming from America, and from the temperate and cold areas of Europe and Asia.

“Two souls with an insatiable desire for good, following different paths that would always lead to one consequence: education as the only way to do good.”

(G.Lombardo Radice, Accanto ai maestri)

Alice Hallgarten and Leopoldo Franchetti started a great educational revolution with their two rural schools. They truly believed that the emancipation of the lower class happened through culture and education. The rural schools of Villa Montesca and Rovigliano, with classes to the 6th level and free access, were created for the peasants’ children and represented a breakthrough both for their dynamic teaching programs and for their social impact. The close relationship between school and the outside world was the focus of their educational programs, characterized by the system of the observation of nature and its phenomena, the introduction of conversation as a means to mutual growth, the concept of a learning environment and the community as teacher itself.

MARIA MONTESSORI

“The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses”, dedicated to the Franchettis, was published in 1909 in Città di Castello. In the same year, the first course of scientific pedagogy was held at Villa Montesca.

THE “TELA UMBRA”

From the idea of culture and education as a way to emancipate the lower classes, Alice developed other important initiatives as, for example, the Umbrian textile laboratory in 1908. These projects became a reference point for the growth of the Alta Valle del Tevere, exploring a new model of interaction between economic and social development.