Courageous, enthusiastic, visionary and passionate, Freya Stark is an icon of 20th century women’s emancipation that has inspired girls of all ages to pursue their own path, fully experiencing the adventure of existence.
Freya Stark. The writer, the explorer, the woman.
Freya Stark is English but was born in Paris in 1893, during a trip of her parents who passed on their passion for adventure. At the age of nine she reads by chance “The Thousand and One Nights”, the magical story of Scheherazade literally changes her life. Freya grows up like a curious and cultured girl showing an eclectic range of interests: her vocation is to travel and put into words her emotions, sensations, and also the colors, flavors and sounds of the places she discovers. She thus becomes one of the first Western women to travel to the Arabian Desert and reach destinations never explored before by European explorers. Stark is also considered the pioneer of travel writing and travel diaries that transport the reader to the point of making him feel the exact same sensations as the explorer. She was a generous and tireless traveler who, when not around the world, loved to fantasize in front of the hundred horizons of the city of Asolo, with which she had a special relationship since she was a child.
Villa Freya in Asolo
Freya spent her last years in the peaceful tranquility of the medieval village of Asolo, in a villa inherited from the poet and family friend Herbert Young. The writer added several style and design touches to the house, influenced by her travels in the Middle East. The rooms were once filled with carpets, tapestries, books, and pottery from all over the world. Today the villa is a private residence while the garden and archaeological park, that extends to the back of the villa, is open to the public through guided tours.
Freya’s room at the Asolo Museum
Inside the Asolo Museum you can visit a space entirely dedicated to the writer, a place where you can find the spirit that characterized her adventurous life, always in line with the times. Here visitors can “snoop” in drawers, touch the keys of her typewriter, touch letters and souvenirs just like in a close friend’s house. On the desk you can find personal items: glasses, pillbox and photo rolls, while in the trunk, a powerful symbol of trips, there are handbags, sketches, and notebooks which we would call scrapbooks today, all incredible souvenirs of an equally incredible life.
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