Villa Contarini

Fondazione G.E. Ghirardi
via L. Camerini 1, Piazzola sul Brenta, Padova
tel. +39 049 8778272
tel. +39 049 8778273
ticket office
tel. +39 049 5590347
fax +39 049 9619016
e-mail: villacontarini@regione.veneto.it
web: www.villacontarini.com

Open to the public:
Thursday to Tuesday 9.00 am - 7.00 pm

Groups (min 15 people) by appointment only

The magniloquent baroque appearance that the Villa Contarini displays today is, in all probability, the result of the seventeenth-century transformation of a villa designed by Andrea Palladio in the 1540s for Paolo Contarini and his brothers.
Traces of Palladio’s work linger on in maps and archival documents, although little is now visible of a building which was transformed in several campaigns from 1662 on. In 1676 the right wing was enlarged and remodelled, with a two-storey order of rustic columns and telamons, and a program of ostentatious sculptural decoration which invades the principal villa block too. A map of 1788 shows that by that date the porticoed hemicycle defining the great piazza already existed.