Summer Renovations at Villa Le Balze Prompt Changes and Excitement for Students

Maren Fagan (CAS ’27)

September 24th, 2025 — On a breezy afternoon below the Tuscan sun, Georgetown University’s
property sits above Florence in the neighboring city of Fiesole to welcome summer session
students.

But this summer isn’t learning as usual. Renovations are underway for the 113-year-old Villa.

“The ongoing renovations have made this summer different,” Fulvio Orsitto, the director of Villa
Le Balze, said. “But all of these renovations will benefit the program soon.”

While Georgetown’s Villa is undergoing expansions in its capacity for classrooms and student
life, students participating in the study abroad program took classes at Gonzaga University’s
campus in Florence and at The Social Hub, a large new hotel near the train station in Florence.
Although classes were not held at the Villa, students still had the opportunity to visit the property
and bond with their cohort.

Renovations at Villa Le Balze

Renovations at the Villa commenced after study abroad students from the Spring 2025 semester
departed. The ongoing work at the Villa this summer focused on transforming the property into
an enhanced site for classrooms and academic facilities.

Originally constructed as a private residence, Villa Le Balze’s bedrooms and bathrooms served
as a Living and Learning Community (LLC), a residential community that offered students the
opportunity to enhance their social and educational connections. The LLC allowed students to
live at and take classes at the Villa, which many alumni fondly recall. The Villa hosted around
20 students, according to Orsitto. When the pandemic shut down the Villa for several semesters,
students began living downtown at a hotel in Florence, and the Villa became the location for
classes.

Although the Villa could accommodate students for their classes while they studied abroad, the
renovations will allow more students to study in the classrooms at the Villa, thanks to reinforced
floors and improved bathrooms.

“It’s a place where students spend the day,” Orsitto said. “So we’re trying to enrich it with
modern amenities and with things students need.”

The Villa expects 72 students to enter in the fall semester, according to Orsitto, so the
renovations to convert bedrooms to larger classrooms with reinforced floors are necessary to
support more students in the study abroad program.

However, due to the Villa’s role in Italian history and architecture, the process of approving
construction projects can take a significant amount of time, according to Orsitto, so planning this
project to enhance the Villa required years of in-depth consideration.

“Bear in mind that all these works require careful planning, require lots of diplomacy on my part
and on our architects’ part because everything needs to be submitted ahead of time,” Orsitto said.
Beyond improvements to the Villa’s main building, the renovation includes refreshing all seven
gardens on the property. Orsitto said renovating the gardens will continue once students return to
Florence for the fall semester, though it will have “minimal impact” on students present, unlike
the building renovations.

Carmeisha Huckleby, the new associate director of Georgetown-administered Global Academic
Programs in the Office of Global Education, visited Florence and the Villa during the first
summer session. She said the renovations will benefit all study abroad students academically and
socially.

“I think that it will be an opportunity for students to get the best of both worlds because they’ll
likely still be living in Florence,” Huckleby said. “So, I think students will love the beauty there,
but they’ll be able to enjoy the city life too.”

Summer’s Classes

While the Villa’s renovations continued for the summer, students in the first summer session
studied in Florence through a partnership with Gonzaga University. In the second session,
students attended classes at The Social Hub.

Gonzaga, a Jesuit university in Washington state, is one of the three Jesuit universities —
including Georgetown — with a program in Florence. Orsitto said he hopes to strengthen this
connection between the universities in the future.

“The projects we have in mind, it’s only going to become more accessible, more beautiful,
etcetera,” Orsitto said. “But that does not prevent the fact that we have established now a very
good connection that is not just a personal connection but also a student connections, I think,
between our students and Gonzaga students.” Orsitto continued, “It can be strengthened in the future with events either here or at the Villa.”

The summer session also featured new professors and classes, including a new theology and
biology class.

Peter Folan, S.J, a professor in the theology department, taught his first class in Florence– “The
Duomo as Classroom.”

Folan said the idea for his class originated from a trip to Barcelona with a friend and seeing the
famous Basílica de la Sagrada Família. Seeing this church, he said, inspired a conversation that
developed the idea of using a church to teach a theology class.

“When the opportunity came up to teach in Florence, with again its most famous building being
the Duomo, and with just a fascinating story behind it, specifically the construction of the dome
on the Duomo, I thought, well, maybe this is my chance,” Folan said. “So I pitched it.”

Folan’s class had 23 students, the largest of the first session, where students explored
Catholicism through the history and symbolism of the iconic Duomo located in Florence. He said
the partnership with Gonzaga helped him teach the class, though he would have enjoyed teaching
at the Villa for the summer.

“In a way, there’s a loss that we’re not teaching at the Villa, but the gain for me is that if the
Duomo is your classroom, and you’re trying to get a sense of that more, to be a 10-12 minute
walk from it as opposed to a 20 a 30-minute bus ride plus a good amount of walking on each
end, you wouldn’t be able to use it as much,” Folan said.

“So actually, one of the reasons why I pitched this course this summer was because I knew that
we were going to be down here in Florence proper,” Folan added. “And I thought it would just
make it more accessible to get to the Duomo.”

Folan said the best part of his Florence teaching experience was the opportunity to meet the
students studying abroad in his class and on the Villa program.

“I get to know some other wonderful people just from sitting together at lunch or going on trips
up to the villa and eating gelato and things like that.”

Folan continued, “And so that’s definitely the highlight for me getting to know more
Georgetown students and then also getting to teach about something I love, which is both
theology, but in particular, Catholicism, through liturgical prayer and through how liturgical
prayer unfolds in a particular space.”

A Florence Focus

When the renovations had a set date for the summer session, Orsitto said the Villa Le Balze team
discussed the best ways to keep the “Le Balze element.”

“So we thought of bringing students to Villa Le Balze, which we did and which we’re going to
do again, but also bringing some Villa Le Balze elements to the students,” Orsitto said.

Orsitto continued, “Since the very beginning, we realized that it would have been a peculiar
summer and so we tried to mitigate the absence of the Villa and bringing it back in some way.”

During the summer sessions, students in Florence visited the Villa’s site and gardens to learn
about the location’s history and enjoy a surprise treat of gelato. The students in attendance for
the second session also visited the Villa for a Fourth of July barbecue activity.

Aadya Kathuria (C ’28) took the journalism course, Reporting from Florence, during the first
session. With the support from her class, Kathuria published a journalism piece in the Florence
Daily News, an English-based news site that reaches all of Tuscany.

Kathuria said that while she was nervous about attending the study abroad program, she found it
“life-changing.”

“I came to Florence, I absolutely fell in love with the city, everything was so beautiful here,”
Kathuria said. “I just loved the way of life. It felt so walkable, so many things to see, things to
do, great food to eat. So I’ve absolutely loved it.”

Kathuria said that while she would have appreciated the opportunity to spend more time at the
Villa, she believes it will ultimately benefit the program.

“I think taking classes in the Villa would have been super fun and just a great area to be in,”
Kathuria said. “But I know with the ongoing renovations, they’re really important for the
continuity of this program, and it will have a positive outcome in the long run.”

Huckelby said the renovations will support the future of Georgetown’s study abroad program in
Florence for future students. “I think that the program is very popular and it’s probably going to
be growing,” Huckelby said. “So I’m just looking forward to seeing what happens.”

Reflecting on her time in Florence, Kathuria believed devotion to new experiences was the best
way to explore a new city and learn about oneself.

“Just immerse yourself in the culture, get lost in the middle of the city, talk to everyone, and
you’ll meet so many amazing people along the way — people you might not have met otherwise
at Georgetown. So, when you have this opportunity, just take it and run with it.”