Ladies’ Valley is a secluded retreat in which the Decameron company briefly turns escape into a shared experience of landscape, bathing, music, and storytelling. Its carefully bounded geography—reached by a narrow path and enclosed by six hills—offers the women privacy, while its lake, orchards, shade, and birdsong make the place a vivid alternative to the restricted domestic spaces described elsewhere in the work.

Discovery and Approach

While the sun was still high after a brief session of storytelling, Elisa invited the other ladies to visit a nearby place she had long wanted to show them. They set out with a maid without telling the young men, and after walking little more than a mile reached the valley. Their arrival is narrated as a deliberate excursion: the company leaves its familiar gathering place, but the women first explore the site on their own terms.

The entrance was very narrow, with a clear stream running along one side. The central plain had no other inlet, so the route by which the women entered also defined the valley’s seclusion. Its shape was almost perfectly round, as if drawn with compasses, though it appeared to be nature’s work; its circuit measured a little more than half a mile. Six low hills enclosed it, each crowned by a palace built like a handsome castle. The slopes descended toward the plain in successive tiers, compared in their arrangement to the seating of an amphitheatre. The setting thus combines natural enclosure with architecture and ordered design, without making the place feel like a constructed garden alone.

Landscape and Water

The slopes divide into distinct zones. Those facing south were filled with vines, olives, almonds, cherries, figs, and other fruit trees, with no portion left unused. The slopes facing the North Star were covered instead with thickets of dwarf oaks, ashes, and other green, straight trees. In the plain, firs, cypresses, laurels, and pines stood in such orderly profusion that they seemed planted by a master gardener. Their dense cover kept almost all sunlight from reaching the ground, where fine grass and flowers spread across the meadow.

Water gives the valley its movement and sound. A stream descended from the ravine between two hills, falling over live-rock cliffs with a pleasant murmur. From a distance, its breaking water looked like quicksilver forced into a fine spray. It then ran through a channel into a small lake in the middle of the plain, compared to the fishponds townspeople sometimes made in their gardens. The lake was no deeper than a man’s stature, with exceptionally clear, still water and a fine gravel bottom visible beneath it. Fish moved in such numbers that watching them was itself a spectacle. The meadow formed the banks, leaving the pool integrated into the open landscape rather than enclosed by built edges.

The Women’s Visit

The ladies praised the place, and, finding the heat great and believing themselves unobserved, decided to bathe. They stationed their maid across the entrance to watch for anyone approaching and give warning. The seven women undressed and entered the lake; its water concealed their bodies no more than thin glass would conceal a red rose. Without stirring the water much, they moved through it after the fish, trying to catch them with their bare hands. They succeeded in taking some before leaving the lake and dressing again.

The excursion makes privacy a practical condition of the women’s leisure: the maid keeps watch at the only approach while the others swim and play. That moment has particular force beside the work’s account of ladies in love, who may be kept within the narrow bounds of their chambers and have fewer ways than men to distract themselves from sorrow. The valley does not erase those constraints, but temporarily gives the women space to move, choose their amusement, and enjoy one another’s company. Their return is unhurried; they walk back softly, still discussing the valley’s beauty.

From Private Excursion to Shared Gathering

When the women returned, the young men were still playing where they had left them. Pampinea laughingly told Dioneo that the ladies had stolen a march on the men. Dioneo answered by asking whether they had begun doing deeds before speaking of them. Pampinea then recounted where they had gone, how the place was laid out, how far away it was, and what they had done there. The king, eager to see it, ordered supper; afterward, the three young men went with their servants to view the valley, which they too praised as one of the most beautiful things in the world.

At daybreak the next morning, the seneschal went ahead with a large train of baggage to make arrangements according to his lord’s command. The whole company followed before the sun had fully risen. The birds seemed to sing more joyfully than on the previous day, and their songs mingled with the company’s as it returned to the valley. After breakfasting on wine and confections, the company sang; at dinner, the tables stood near the lake beneath laurels and other trees, and the fish swimming in shoals prompted conversation as well as observation. Beds were set out in different parts of the valley, screened by curtains and canopies of French serge, so that those who wished could sleep while others pursued their usual pastimes. Once everyone had gathered on carpets beside the lake, storytelling resumed. The valley therefore becomes more than a picturesque stop: its secluded natural setting accommodates both spontaneous private recreation and the company’s organized communal routine.