{"id":35023,"date":"2026-04-15T14:11:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.villa-lena.it\/?p=35023"},"modified":"2026-04-15T14:16:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-15T13:16:32","slug":"a-letter-from-lena-the-gladiators-of-san-michele","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.villa-lena.it\/it\/a-letter-from-lena-the-gladiators-of-san-michele\/","title":{"rendered":"A Letter from Lena: The Gladiators of San Michele"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Letter from Lena: The Gladiators of San Michele<\/h1>\n

The historical quirks of language are always curious\u2014especially in a country like Italy, where history lingers in every word, and dialects rebel against uniformity. Italian, with its aristocratic Latin roots and proudly local flair, holds two names for the iris: Il Giglio and Il Giaggiolo.<\/p>\n

Il Giglio, the noble name for the fleur-de-lys\u2014the emblem of Florence\u2014confusingly refers to both the iris and the lily. Since the 11th century, these flowers have been mistaken for one another in drawings and poems and spoken word. The iris of Florence is a tall, slender creature, opening up in thin white or delicately blue petals in force either end of April or beginning of May. It is an ancestral flower, as if the Florentines sensed its power to never change and picked the perfect symbol for their city \u2013 this type of iris breeds under the earth, through rhizome, unperturbed by the chaos above.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\" \u00a0\"\"<\/div>\n

But it wasn\u2019t only a symbol. It was a resource. The bulbs were harvested, ground, and transformed into precious perfume. To distinguish it from the lily, locals gave it a new name: Il Giaggiolo. From gladiolo, meaning \u201clittle sword,\u201d a nod to its blade-like leaves\u2014fierce and elegant. The gladiators of the flower world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Megan Gabrielle Harris Iris, 2025 Acrylic on canvas, Villa Lena Collection, \u00a0by Leonardo Morfini<\/p>\n

Villa Lena stands on the ley line of Archangel Michael, the so-called Sword of Saint Michael,stretching from Israel to Ireland. Our land lies directly on this sacred axis. In \u00a0Italy, the oldest celebration of Saint Michael falls on the 8th of May\u2014the same day as the Festa del Giaggiolo. A hidden alignment, like the iris rhizomes underfoot.<\/p>\n

Here, the irises bloom along sandy paths and in our gardens, their green swords rising proudly. They are our angelic gladiators\u2014quiet guardians of spring, both celestial and earthly.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Lena Evstafieva<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Letter from Lena: The Gladiators of San Michele The historical quirks of language are always curious\u2014especially in a country…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-letters-from-lena"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Letter from Lena: The Gladiators of San Michele - Villa Lena<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"As we welcome 2026, I personally wanted to look back at my time in 2025 at Villa Lena. Every year is different at our estate\u2014so much so that sometimes it feels like ten lifetimes have passed, and I have been ten different people. 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