Bolotana, Villa Piercy

The Badd'e Salighes forest is made up of native plants, some of which are thousands of years old, and exotic plants, planted in the park around Villa Piercy by the owner of the estate, the engineer Benjamin Piercy.
In 1862, the Welsh engineer Benjamin Piercy (1827-1888) was commissioned to coordinate a group of designers to study the railway tracks to be built in Sardinia, following the first agreement with an Anglo-Italian company led by Gaetano Semenza. Piercy landed on the island for a brief inspection in 1865, to return there permanently at the end of that decade, after some assignments in northwestern France and India, where he had stayed for two years. It was during the construction of the Cagliari-Porto Torres railway line that Piercy decided to invest some capital in the island, in the agricultural and mining sector, and to buy - around 1880 - the estate of Badd'e Salighes, in the territory of Bolotana, where he settled his residence.
Here Piercy built the largest and most modern Sardinian farm of the time, at the center of which was the villa, built between 1879 and 1882, surrounded by a beautiful English park in which exotic plants from various parts of the world were added to native plants, such as oak, yew and oak. The villa, in English colonial style, consists of a quadrangular body with circular towers at the corners and inside it was characterized by fixed furnishings 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 slotted windows, surmounted by a domed roof on which iron pinnacles are inserted. The rest of the building is imprinted with the most rustic simplicity of a British cottage, in which the echo of William Mason's verses, quoted by Kenneth Clark (1928), resounds in the invitation to build farms in the shape of castles, “with round towers that will provide a safe refuge 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.
In 2007, the restoration work included in the enhancement project relating both to the forest and the garden and to the architectural heritage of historical value represented by the villa and the contemporary agricultural village, was completed.

History of studies
A review of studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography
A. Della Marmora, Itinerary of the Island of Sardinia, Cagliari, Alagna, 1868, pp. 440-441;
L. Carta, “Benjamin Piercy (1827-1888)”, in Bolotanesi Notebooks, 13, 1987; To learn about the country, Bolotana, Municipal Administration of Bolotana, 1991;
S. Mezzolani-A. Simoncini, Sardinia to save: industrial archeology, Nuoro, 1995;
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy to the end of the 20th century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 13.

How to get there
You can reach the town of Badd'e Salighes by taking the road that from the SS 131, at km 156, leads to Bolotana. Inside the forest of Badd'e Salighes you can see, as well as visit inside, the nineteenth-century Villa Piercy.

Tag

Content type: Civil architecture

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

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.

Update

21/5/2024 - 16:54

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