Villa San Girolamo

Villa San Girolamo

The English Patient begins in the Villa, named eventually as Villa San Girolamo. It has served as a hospital for the British forces. Previously it served as lodging for the Germans forces, and before that as a nunnery. Hana works in the hospital, but refuses to move on with the rest of the doctors, nurses and patients when the hospital uproots to move north. Instead she hands in her uniform and remains by the side of her English patient, Almasy. The Villa is located in the hills near Florence, Italy. It is likely in Fiesole, Italy. It is in such ruin, that it protects Hana and the Patient from outsiders. Eventually, David Caravaggio and Kirpal Singh also arrive at the Villa.
The villa anchors the narrative. It harbours the characters of the novel in the aftermath of the war, although many of their minds wander to other locations. While living in the villa, they remember their homes in Toronto and India, their work in Pisa, England, Cairo, and the Egyptian/Libyan desert. The English Patient, while remaining in body in the villa, wanders in mind to the Gilf Kebir, the Wadi Sura, and other locations of the desert.
In “Deconstructing the Nation – Transnationalism in Ondaatje’s The English Patient” Vijayalayn and Jose argue that the villa parallels the passing identities of the patient and other characters,
“in keeping with the patient’s portrayal, the villa also represents a phenomenon of passing identities. From being a nunnery it becomes a lodging camp for the German troops, subsequently converted into a hospital when captured by the allied soldiers. It is noteworthy that with every new occupation increasingly substantial damages are inflicted on the villa’s architecture. (Vijaylayn and Jose, 677).
The villa has become a place where most of the characters can recover from the war. They are damaged, much as the villa is. They shed their skins, as explorers, lovers, nurses, thieves... and become individual people grappling with what they have lost and who they are.

“The Villa San Girolamo, built to protect inhabitants from the flesh of the devil, had the look of a besieged fortress, the limbs of most of the statues blown off during the first day of shelling. There seemed little demarcation between house and landscape, between damaged building and the burned and shelled remnants of the earth” (Ondaatje, 43)