Standing in dappled tree-shade on her lanai, dressed in a pearl choker and long, pleated turquoise tunic reminiscent of classical Greece, Honolulu resident Dialta Alliata di Montereale is half the world away from Florence, Italy, where she was born and raised.

But just as she did in her parents’ villa on a hill overlooking Florence, she has a beautiful view.

Asked whether she gets homesick for Italy, “Not at all,” said Montereale, 66. “My kids grew up here. I love the feeling of the air on the skin. People are lovely. Birds. Nature. Everywhere else you go is very stressful.”

One source of stress has been her 25-year paternity battle carrying inheritance rights to an estimated $1 billion estate housed in another Florentine hill villa — the 14th-century La Pietra — which inspired the 20th-century “mini La Pietra,” as Montereale calls the Diamond Head school.

On July 17, pausing in a New York airport on her return flight after visiting her family in Italy, Montereale found news on her phone: The Italian court had made a decision.

“We won,” she said, her blue eyes shining.

Montereale and her family had prevailed in establishing that her mother, Liana Beacci, was the daughter of Arthur Acton, the influential British art dealer who filled La Pietra in Florence with his priceless collection of art.

From the age of 19 until she died at 75, Montereale said, her grandmother Ersilia Beacci was Acton’s lover despite his marriage to an American heiress.

As Montereale recounts in her self-published book, “My Mother, My Father and His Wife Hortense — Provenance: Villa La Pietra,” Acton, who had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, doted on his daughter, painting Liana Beacci’s portrait every year on her birthday. Sadly, she hadn’t understood he was her father until at age 15 she fell in love with one of his sons, William Acton, and her mother told her it was impossible because he was her half brother.

William Acton died during World War II, and after the senior Actons died, their surviving son, Harold Acton, a British bon vivant and reputedly the model for Anthony Blanche in Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited,” inherited La Pietra and everything in it.

But it wasn’t until Harold Acton died in 1994 and left La Pietra to New York University that Liana Beacci, feeling shocked and betrayed at being left out of his will, decided to sue for her share.

It was a long, hard fight.

The first chapter of Montereale’s book describes the exhumation of Acton’s corpse from a Florentine cemetery in 2003 to take DNA samples.

Meanwhile, NYU vigorously contested the paternity that could put at risk its exclusive ownership of the 57-acre campus — La Pietra includes gardens designed by her grandfather and four other “minor” villas, Montereale said.

“For me and my family, it is a great satisfaction — the recognition that my mother was the daughter of Arthur Acton is very important for her memory,” said Montereale, whose mother died while staying with her in Honolulu in 2000.

“Of course, honor and principle goes first,” she continued. “Why would such a huge academic institution, with such a powerful board of trustees, fight 25 years to obstruct the rights and the paternity of one woman?”

The question seems academic, given that half a billion-odd dollars and the sundering of a celebrated art collection may be at stake.

“My lawyer Andrea Cecchetti and I are confident that we will win also the inheritance lawsuit because Italian and European law clearly states that my mother, Liana, is the heir of 50% of her father’s estate.”

NYU spokesman John Beckman said in a statement Tuesday, “The only issue that the most recent court ruling addressed was the paternity of Liana Beacci. Contrary to some claims, it does not in any way, shape, or form settle the issue of inheritance, on which there has been no ruling.”

NYU claims that everything actually belonged to Hortense Acton, but “this is not true, and we have documents to prove it,” Montereale said.

After all, she said, Arthur Acton was an illustrious art dealer, a friend and protege of legendary American architect Stanford White. Acton provided art and furnishings for the Hearst Castle, the Frick Collection and the Robert Lehman Collection now housed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others.

He also sent 16th-century Italian statues that stand in the gardens of Honolulu’s La Pietra, built in 1920 by Walter and Louise Dillingham, who were married at the original La Pietra; Montereale’s four daughters saw the statues daily when they attended Hawaii School for Girls.

Asked whether she might seek some of the artwork or a monetary settlement if she prevails, “I don’t think along those lines yet, as it is premature,” Montereale said.

As a longtime patron of the EuroCinema Hawaii film festival, did she have any artistic or creative dreams a settlement might further?

“I don’t need any settlement to fulfill my dreams,” she replied.

At this moment her husband, Vittorio Alliata di Montereale, returned home in time to pose for a photo with his wife and one of the couple’s dogs, Tadzio, named, like their son, for the beautiful boy in “Death in Venice,” the Thomas Mann novella made into a film by Luigi Visconti.

He is the scion of a wealthy family that owns the Fondazione Cini in Venice, another palazzo filled with priceless art.

Was love of art something that bound the couple from the first?

“No, it was a magnetic mutual attraction, although when I first met him his face was covered with a big reddish brown mustache and beard and all I could see was his eyes,” Dialta Montereale said.

On a sweltering day she looked as cool and poised as one of her favorite artworks in her grandfather’s villa, a statue of Venus, goddess of love, placed in a shady grotto. The triumphant gleam in her eyes, however, recalled Athena, the goddess of law, justice and the arts.

Asked whether she would like to take the Venus statue, she said, “But it looks so good there. It would be a pity.”