Asterisk denotes entries on real places.
*Naples.
Fiammetta’s bedchamber. Room in Fiammetta’s husband’s house in which she dreams her dreams and watches her beauty blossom before ever meeting Panfilo. Here she suffers her nightmare about a field in which she is bitten by a venomous snake that presages her failed affair. After her initially flirtatious but innocent meetings with Panfilo become carnal, her bedchamber becomes the sexual playground that only they share, away from prying eyes or nosy servants. Even her nurse, apparently, does not know what her lover looks like. Here Fiammetta meets the Roman goddess Venus and the Fury Tisiphone, with whom she has imagined conversations about her love and eventual grief. Eventually despairing of her love, she decides–within her bedchamber–upon suicide, which drives her into a kind of madness from which she is saved by her nurse and servants.
*Baia. Rugged seaside retreat on the Bay of Naples that Fiammetta and her husband visit in the hope that the local baths will help cure her of the depression into which she sinks after Panfilo leaves. However, since she and Panfilo have previously romped in this same resort, every rock and tree she sees there reminds her of him, and the effect of her visit is the opposite of what her cuckolded husband hopes for. Fiammetta’s spoiled looks, neglected dress, and grieving contrast with the ruddy beauty and boisterous gaiety of other vacationing aristocrats, who engage in hunting and gather together for amorous festivities and wedding ceremonies.
*Florence. Historic center of culture and political power in central Italy from which Panfilo comes and to which he returns to tend to his father’s business. The virtues of Naples are depicted in sharp contrast to the rowdiness of Florence, the “noble city of Etruria.” Florence is full of people who are cowards and big talkers, as well as haughty, jealous, and greedy men under not one ruler but as many as there are citizens.
In the early 1340’s Florence was torn by civil strife related to the failure of two major banks and a change in regime. In Boccaccio’s book, Neapolitan peacefulness is set against the turbulent Florentine society that conducts war both within and with others, perhaps suggesting that Panfilo’s apparently flighty character is a reflection of the unstable city. That Panfilo would choose to leave noble Naples–and Fiammetta–for rowdy Florence shocks Fiammetta. She worries about what might be happening to her beloved in that distant city and madly resents the hold Florence has on him. Though the book’s narrative never visits Florence itself, the city’s presence is keenly felt.
*Mediterranean Sea. Though Panfilo could travel from Naples to Florence and back by land, he makes the first leg of his journey by the sea, which symbolically and geographically separates him from Fiammetta. At first, Fiammetta worries about the dangers the sea holds for her love; after his return to Naples begins to appear unlikely, she wishes the sea’s perils on him.