Roman Villa Silj, Storygardenz and Swimming Pool doorstep of Rome for holidays and vacations

History of Roman Villa Silj

They say sixty percent of the world's art treasures are in Italy and half of those, in and around Rome. That means that thirty percent of the world's art treasures are within ten to sixty minutes from our home, the Roman Villa.

Roman Villa Silj stands on the ancient border between the Etruscan world and the city of Rome, near the river Tiber. Here the Etruscans, a mysterious and magical race, created a powerful empire and an important civilization in central Italy, which also resulted in the foundation of Rome, in the first millennium before Christ.

Villa Silj was built in the early nineteenth century by my grandfather (my mother's father), Marquis Bernardino Silj di Sant'Andrea di Ussita. It was one of many farm houses on their huge farming estate (about 14,000 hectares - 30,000 acres) ……..

In the thirties my uncle came to live here and founded a club known as the "Convivium Romanum", well known artists met to eat, drink, paint and talk about art. Many of their paintings and portraits now decorate the walls of the Villa and the apartments……

In 1945 my father, Hugo Anson, came to Rome to marry my mother, Annina, and to pursue a life of leisure as a gentleman farmer, and polo player ………. Those were the days of the "dolce vita". I still have memories of Prince Phillip coming for strategic polo brunches at our house. Then they would all plan the evenings ahead: Anita Eckberg ? Marcello Mastroianni ? Audrey Hepburn ? Federico Fellini ? And princess Elizabeth (future Queen) might also come dancing.

But there was a lot of opposition to my father's marriage with my mother, Annina Silj. The Siljs were most influential in the Roman Church. They knew things about my father's English family that he didn't imagine: for example that the Ansons (Earls of Lichfield) were an important British Knights Templar family and that at Shugborough House, the family seat, were hidden certain secrets, evoking an old bitter enmity.

By some strange fluke, there are parallels between the Knights Templar symbolism in the Shugborough House garden and Christian and Templar symbolism in the garden of the Roman Villa. Now the mystery concerning this and my father's identity are engraved on an ancient monolith in the garden, and on his tomb, in the family chapel at the Roman Villa.

When I came to live at the Roman Villa and began to write "Carmen Via", a book about landscapes of memory and imagination, I began to research many tales about the Roman Villa and its nearby territory: about Greek heroes and myth, about Etruscan magic, about Roman imperial power, about the dawn of Christianity. But I also discovered many new things about my own family, which seemed just as extraordinary: about the Silj family's contradictory role in terminating the Roman Church's claims to the old Roman Empire; about the wild artists of the Convivium group; about the bitter templar-Church dispute.

This is a garden of mysterious tales, but I have decided to celebrate one tale in particular: the Convivium Romanum moveable feast. I am an author and a storyteller but I say that culture comes after life. Without life there's no Michelangelo, nor Mozart, nor nothing.

Here, the Roman Villa garden is a lazy place for swinging in a hammock and listening to the birds and cicalas; for sitting, talking, and drinking coffee under the pergola or the Linden tree. The Colosseum and thirty percent of the world's art treasures can wait another day; they have waited long, already.

That’s the real meaning of the word vacation; it comes from the Latin "dies vacantes" meaning empty days. When was the last time you had any empty days?

In the pauses of such weightless pursuits, as your body and mind recuperate from the folly of everyday existence, you may actually catch some strains of the fabulous tales of the villa. They will reveal to you that empty days can bring gifts, far greater than mere relaxation. That's why we call this garden a storygardenz. This villa and garden became a prototype for a worldwide tourism project of magnificent residences, where re-storying place in empty days offers an ECO for this time (read more about what is a storygardenz).

Bernard Anson Silj