HISTORY

AN ANCIENT HOUSE

The original nucleus of Villa Freya was built between the 18th and the 19th centuries along the boundary of the pre-existing medieval walls. In the 19th century it was purchased by the priest Pietro Basso, as it was recorded in the Austrian Land Register of 1842. When he died, Villa Freya became the property of Pompeo Krum, who later sold it to the landscape painter Herbert Young Hammerton. Flora Stark together with her daughters Freya and Vera, who had been born to Robert Stark, came to Asolo during the First World War to live with Herbert Young Hammerton. Freya, after spending some time in the United States, took possession of the house and lived there until 1966. In the 1960s, the house was bought by the Province of Treviso, which used it as a hostel.

HISTORY OF A MYTH

Freya Stark (Paris 1893 - Asolo 1993), English explorer and writer, was the last heir of a series of great English travellers like Kipling and Lawrence. Thanks to her adventurous journeys in the Middle East, she became a legendary figure of the 20th century. She was linked to the most prominent personalities of her time such as Churchill, the Queen Mother, Marshals Montgomery, Allemby, Kitchener, the legendary Lawrence of Arabia. Furthermore, Freya Stark carried out important missions for the Foreign Office.

Freya Stark worked for the Red Cross in the Karst region during the First World War and in 1927 she went on numerous trips and missions to the East, organising expeditions to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Persia and Arabia until 1937. At the outbreak of the Second World War, she went to Yemen and Egypt where she set up a clandestine propaganda network called 'Brotherhood'.

In the period after the war she was involved in many trips all over the world and after her last expedition to Nepal at the age of 88, Freya moved definitely to Asolo.

Her close bond with the city of Asolo began at an early age when she moved there with her family and it was so important for her that she received an honorary citizenship and the keys to the city. Freya Stark died in May 1993, a few days after turning 100, and she rests in the cemetery of S. Anna, a few steps from the tombs of Eleonora Duse and HerbertYoung Hammerton.