Villa Strohl Fern

Villa Strohl Fern is a Neo-Gothic villa and gardens on the grounds of the Villa Borghese in Rome, built by the Alsatian aristocrat Alfred Wilhelm Strohl, who bought the land around 1879 after being displaced by the German occupation of Alsace in 1870. He added fern, meaning far away, to his name to mark his exile, and laid out the gardens with cement trees, stalactite fountains, grottoes, covered bridges and an artificial pond with a cement boat. The estate became known for hosting many prominent artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After Strohl death in 1927 the property passed to the French government, and since 1957 it has housed the Lycee Chateaubriand.