Myron P. Gilmore, professor of History, will leave Friday for an intensive two-week trip to Italy in connection with the recently acquired Villa I Tatti, willed to the University in October by the late Bernard R. Berenson '88.

Gilmore will spend one week in Florence, mostly at I Tatti, which is not a single villa, but an estate of four villas. 13 farms, and 200 acres. The other week will be spent in Rome, meeting with directors of institutions comparable to the center the University plans to set up at I Tatti.

Acting in Italy as the representative of University Professor Paul H. Buck, chairman of the special committee on I Tatti, Gilmore will be expected to explore only "the most preliminary considerations" necessary to work out a program and budget for the proposed center. His findings will be submitted directly to the committee, which will in turn prepare a report for the Corporation.

In speaking of the proposed center, Gilmore noted that "there are all sorts of possibilities," but little that is definite yet except that nothing will be removed from the estate to the University.

The estimated $2 million needed to establish the center will not come from funds of the Program for Harvard College, according to Gilmore. And since Berenson left an endowment large enough only to maintain the library and physical plant of I Tatti, any special research fellowships will have to be financed separately.

"It is our hope," Gilmore explained, "that people interested in the ideals Berenson stood for and in the program we want to set up, will provide this money through special gifts to the University."

Edna Louise Lucas, librarian of the Fogg Museum, will accompany Gilmore to Italy to study the library at I Tatti in relation both to holdings now in Fogg and to those in other collections in Florence.