Bolotana, Villa Piercy - house museum

Villa Piercy, built between 1879 and 1882 by the Welsh railway engineer Benjamin Piercy, is surrounded by a beautiful English-style park in which native plants, such as downy oaks, badgers and oaks, are added to exotic plants from various parts of the world. The villa, in English colonial style, consists of a quadrangular body with circular towers at the corners and inside it was characterized by fixed furniture and fine finishes.
The two-story building, divided by a smooth and flat band, with a quadrilobed rectangular plan, in plastered stone, is only vaguely inspired by a medieval castle because of the four towers with loophole windows, surmounted by a domed roof on which iron pinnacles are grafted. The rest of the building is imprinted with the more rustic simplicity of a British cottage, in which the echo of William Mason's verses, quoted by Kenneth Clark (1928) resonates in the invitation to build farms in the form of castles, “with round towers that will provide a safe haven for pigeons and their small implumes.” On the front door there is a coat of arms with a rampant lion, a tribute by the former owner to his Welsh birthplace.
The villa, restored in the first decade of 2000 together with the park and the small agricultural village planted by the Piercy family, is currently usable.

Why it is important to visit it
The villa, in addition to the aesthetic quality of its simple architectural lines and the beauty of the English garden that surrounds it, immerses the visitor in the atmosphere of the historic family saga of the famous engineer Benjamin Piercy, a powerful man, in love with Sardinia and kissed by luck, at least to the point of illness during a banquet that took his life (in 1888).
In exchange for the activity for the largest Sardinian public work (until then) Benjamin Piercy also received various lands in the territory of Bolotana, where he built, with an investment of more than one million liras, an amazing amount for the time, a modern company defined as a 'monument erected to Agriculture'.

Tag

Structure category: museum, gallery and/or collection

Content type: History
Environmental site
Ethnography and anthropology
Civil architecture

Usability: Open

Province: Nuoro

Common: Bolotana

Macro Territorial Area: Central Sardinia

POSTAL CODE: 08011

Address: SP 17 - località Badd'e Salighes

Telephone: +39 329 0275598 +39 334 3134553

E-mail: villapiercy@gmail.com

Website: sites.google.com/view/villapiercy/home-page?authuser=1

Facebook: www.facebook.com/villapiercy

January - December

Monday - Saturday - Sunday

10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

Information on tickets and access: The cost of tickets is temporarily unknown, it is advisable to contact the structure in advance at tel. +39 329 0275598 and +39 334 3134553, or via email, for information about it, and to check visiting times and usability.

Access mode: For a fee

Tickets :

Update

20/5/2024 - 11:52

Services

Guided tours