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History of RVS


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, RVS, the Roman Villa.


RVS 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 a great civilization in central Italy. The Etruscans founded Rome, in the first millennium before Christ.


RVS was built in the early nineteenth century and was part of one of the biggest farming estates in Rome. In the 1930's it became the meeting place of a well known group of artists, the "Convivium Romanum", who met here to spend long leisurely, productive afternoons: eating, drinking, swinging, narrating, inventing, painting. Many of their paintings now decorate the walls of the Villa and the apartments....

The Convivium Romanum tradition has been perpetuated - with artist friends - by current owner Bernard Anson, author and storyteller. Then in 2009, RVS became the founding site of an international project called Storygardenz, dedicated to cultural ecology.


This is a garden of mysterious, fantastic tales, now collected into a single art work by Bernard Anson: the Convivium Romanum art, the archeological ruins, the garden, all collected in "The Three Languages" (of a lifetime: fairy tale, legend and myth), a book can not only be read on its pages, but also visited in the features and incidents of the (story) garden itself.


It is the "Convivium Romanum" life, reminiscent of the 30's, which is celebrated most at RVS, in the storygardenz project and even in cultural ecology. For without that quality time - so scarce now with the increasing tempo of communication and living - there is no life nor culture. Culture comes after life and time; without that life, without those reveries, there is no Michelangelo, nor Mozart, nor nothing.