Villa Piercy

A visit to discover a different Sardinia cannot fail to include a stop in the wonderful park of Badde Salighes (Valle dei Salici) near Bolotana.
This locality is located a few kilometers away from the inhabited center, right in the direction of the S.S. 131 (the main communication artery of the island).
So if you arrive from that road, as soon as you leave the junction for Bolotana, you will find the wooden sign that indicates the park, located at almost 1,000 meters above sea level. of the sea. Inside Badde Salighes there is a beautiful nineteenth-century villa, commissioned by the Welsh engineer Benjamin Piercy to live there with his family.
At this point you may wonder what a Welsh engineer was doing in the heart of the island.

It is very easy to get to this park.
In practice, it is compulsory to cross it to get to the town of Bolotana, at least if you come from the western part of the island.

Inside the park, characterized by the presence of native vegetation that coexists peacefully with the exotic one imported from the late 19th century by the Piercy family, are the premises of the Territorial Environmental Education Center, belonging to the Union of Municipalities of the Marghine.
In this place Stefania and her colleagues organize various activities (including guided tours and workshops) aimed at making the environment known and respected.

Among the wonders of this park, having crossed a small gate located right next to the Environmental Education Center, you can admire, camouflaged among the luxuriant vegetation, the oldest example of the Yew in Sardinia.
It is a majestic tree that boasts more than 1,200 years.
Michele and Lola had a lot of fun running around its sturdy trunk, while Stefania explained to us how the experts calculated the age of this badger.

But the real jewel of this place, whose history and presence has characterized the life of the park, is certainly the wonderful late 19th century villa built by the Welsh engineer Benjamin Piercy.
And here we return to the premise question: what was a Welsh engineer doing in central Sardinia?

Villa Piercy was built by the Welsh engineer Benjamin Piercy, specifically called to the island to build the Sardinian railway line (still in use).
As compensation for this prestigious assignment, among other things, he was given a vast territory partly falling into the countryside of Bolotana.
Here he wanted to realize his dream of starting a farm, which soon became one of the most important in Sardinia.

The Villa is none other than the residence of the Piercy family and his visit allowed us to discover an important part of the history of Sardinia.
The building is in fact a precious testimony of the moment in which this island faced the modern era and the technologies and comforts it offered.
Room after room we got to know the history of this family and its fascinating members, so well integrated in the worldly life of their time.

Today the Villa no longer belongs to the Piercy family, but was taken over, after years of complete abandonment, by the Union of Municipalities of the Marghine which made it its headquarters.

The beautiful English garden develops around the villa, inside which Michele and Lola had a lot of fun chasing and hiding.
All around there is the beautiful park, wanted and cared for by Benjamin Piercy himself, a lover of botany.

Since it was a farm and the Piercys certainly couldn’t do everything on their own, not far from the Villa is the village once inhabited by the company’s employees.
It was a well-organized and self-sufficient village, complete with a school and a shop.
That of Benjamin Piercy’s estate was truly a reality thought out down to the smallest detail!

A visit to the Badde Salighes Park and the beautiful Villa Piercy is certainly an experience suitable for children, who can have a lot of fun outdoors while learning new things about the nature that surrounds them.
The park will tickle their curiosity and their desire to run and explore, while the Villa with its many rooms and its fascinating history will be an inexhaustible source for new adventures.

The visit to these places is recommended for the whole family and will allow you to discover a very beautiful, little known and very fascinating corner of Sardinia.
In this way you will have the opportunity to know a very particular moment in Sardinian history and closer to ours than that told by the nuraghi and archaeological sites.