The last home of British adventurer Freya Stark was sold to a property giant on Wednesday, dashing hopes of keeping it in public hands.
A northern Italian provincial government put the pioneering travel writer's villa in the town of Asolo up for sale last year, saying it could no longer afford the upkeep. Asolo Mayor Daniele Ferrazza sought vainly to muster interest from Italian and British cultural organisations.
In the end, only one bid came in, from the Treviso-based construction Carron Group.
Speaking to ANSA on the phone, a Carron representative deflected questions about its intentions for the property, amid fears that it may do it up and sell it on to wealthy clients.
Ferrazza, meanwhile, could not conceal his disappointment at the failure of a 'white knight' to ride in.
"It's gone to the Carron Group, that's all I can say. I don't even know what price they paid".
Auctioneers told ANSA the group paid 2.75 million euros ($3.3 million) for the villa.
This was almost one million euros above the base price of 1.87 million euro ($2.25 million) - a sign of the
construction group's eagerness to secure the site. Under Italian law, however, the culture ministry, the
Veneto regional government and the town of Asolo have 60 days to win back the villa.
Mayor Ferrazza declined to estimate the chances of raising the money.
On the eve of the auction, Ferrazza voiced the hope that a public buyer would turn the villa into a permanent
museum to Freya, preserving the cultural legacy she left behind.
Since Stark's death in 1993 at the age of 100 the villa has staged the occasional exhibition on her life but has been difficult to visit. The mayor pointed out that Stark, a trailblazing solo traveller, reporter and photographer who went boldly into areas never before visited by western women, had written most of her two dozen books in Asolo.
Asolo, a medieval town whose other residents included English poet Robert Browning, American novelist Ernest Hemingway and Italian actress Eleonora Duse, had been her home since the 1960s.
Stark produced highly personal books describing the history, culture and everyday life of the places she visited - most notably the Middle East. At a time when few women travelled without an escort, even in relatively hospitable areas of the world, Stark's solo treks took her to remote areas of Turkey and Arabia.
A nurse in World War One, Stark was rumoured to have had a fling with Lawrence of Arabia, and in WWII worked for British intelligence in Aden, Baghdad, and Cairo, where she founded the anti-Nazi Brotherhood of Freedom. She later visited Asia, notably Afghanistan and Nepal. Even well into her 80s, against doctor's advice, she trekked into the Himalayas.
Her fighting spirit is encapsulated in an episode Asolo residents are fond of telling visitors.
When burglars broke into the villa in the mid-1980s she took her revolver and sent them packing with the words: "My dear chaps, I have six shots in the chamber and an unerring aim. It's up to you".
