Brenta Riviera Villas

The Brenta Riviera (Riviera del Brenta) is a historic waterway corridor following the Brenta canal between Padua and Venice, lined with more than fifty grand villas built from the 16th to 18th centuries as summer retreats for the Venetian aristocracy. When the heat and bustle of Venice grew oppressive, patrician families travelled by decorated barge (burchiello) up the Brenta to these country estates, where they entertained on a lavish scale; the villas, many designed by Palladio and his followers and frescoed by the leading painters of the day, form an open-air museum of Venetian villa culture strung along the canal banks. The grandest is the monumental Villa Pisani at Stra, a near-royal palace of 114 rooms with a ceiling fresco by Giambattista Tiepolo, formal gardens, stables, and a famous box-hedge maze that once entertained Napoleon, who bought the villa, as well as visiting tsars and writers; it later hosted the first meeting between Hitler and Mussolini. Other highlights include Palladio's elegant Villa Foscari, known as 'La Malcontenta', on the Venice end of the canal, and the Barchessa villas near Mira. The classic way to experience the riviera is the Burchiello boat excursion, a full-day cruise between Padua and Venice that passes the villas, navigates historic locks and swing bridges, and stops for guided visits to several estates; the route can also be driven or cycled along the canal-side roads. Visit times range from a couple of hours at a single villa to a full day by boat. Villa Pisani charges a modest admission, with separate tickets for the maze, and is busiest at weekends and in summer; spring and early autumn offer pleasant weather and quieter grounds. Set between two of the Veneto's great cities in Italy, the Brenta Riviera reveals the leisured world of the Venetian Republic.