Giardino di Villa Freya Stark

At the Portello di Castelfranco are the house and the park that belonged to Lady Freya Stark, a great traveler and English writer (Paris 1893-Asolo 1993) who chose Asolo as a place to recuperate after her exhausting exploration travels in the Middle East. On the door leading to the house is set a ceramic tile of Eastern design with an inscription in Arabic. The garden had been transformed into a botanical garden as it housed the species collected during Stark's travels. The park at the back of the house was occupied in Roman times by the architectural complex of the Roman theater, discovered starting from 1879 by Pacifico Scomazzetto; in the 1990s it underwent excavations conducted by the University of Padua. The restoration work was completed in 2012, and now the Archaeological Park Garden is open to the public: it can be accessed through guided tours, which allow visitors to learn about the adventurer Freya Stark and the vibrant cultural and artistic climate of early 20th century Asolo, the numerous floral and arboreal species kept, such as the centuries-old holm oaks, the bitter orange, and the feijoa, and the archaeological remains of the ancient theater of Acelum.