Villa Barbaro
Interesting facts
- Two of Veronese's painted false doors show a young hunter with his dogs and a richly dressed lady, often taken as portraits of the painter and his wife.
- The Hall of Olympus also portrays Giustiniana's elder sons Almorò and Daniele, and a small monkey joins the parrot and the dog among the family pets.
- The two sundials on the end pavilions do different jobs: the western one tells the hours and the start of the seasons, the eastern one works as a zodiac calendar.
- One of the frescoed rooms is dedicated to Bacchus and shows scenes of winemaking, a nod to the villa's role as a working farm estate.
- Over the centuries the villa passed through the Trevisan, Basadonna and Manin families; Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of Venice, was among its owners.
- In 1934 the villa was bought by Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, whose daughter Marina settled there and spent years restoring it.
- The nymphaeum behind the house holds statues of gods such as Diana, Apollo and Pan, while four oversized telamons support its entablature.
- The estate still runs a farm that produces DOC wine bearing the villa's name.
- A carriage museum on the grounds displays about thirty vehicles from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
- Alessandro Vittoria also provided the stucco decoration of the Tempietto, the domed chapel Palladio designed near the villa.
Why it is worth it
At the foot of the hills at Maser, Villa Barbaro spreads in a long, symmetrical line across the slope: a central block fronted by four Ionic columns and a temple pediment, flanked by arcaded wings that end in pavilions bearing large sundials. Designed by Andrea Palladio for the brothers Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, and decorated inside by Paolo Veronese, it is one of the supreme achievements of the Venetian Renaissance country house, bringing together the architect and the painter with the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria.
The patrons were among the most cultivated Venetians of their age. Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia and a diplomat in England, was a scholar for whose edition of the Roman architect Vitruvius Palladio had drawn the illustrations; his brother Marcantonio served as ambassador to the French court. The date of building is debated, with most estimates placing it around 1560. Palladio modelled the central portico on the ancient Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome and set a dedication to the brothers' father in Latin across its frieze. Unusually for him, the arcaded wings, normally given over to farm use, include private living rooms on the upper floor, while the end pavilions held dovecotes above rooms for winemaking and stables. Behind the house, a semicircular nymphaeum adorned with sculpture frames a natural spring.
Inside, the main floor holds what is considered Veronese's most important fresco cycle, painted around 1560. Illusionistic painting plays tricks on the eye: in the Hall of Olympus, Marcantonio's wife Giustiniana appears with her youngest son, a nurse, a parrot and a spaniel, while elsewhere servants peer around painted doorways and imaginary landscapes open on the walls. Near the villa stands the Tempietto Barbaro, a small domed church modelled on the Pantheon, with an inscription dated 1580; it is one of Palladio's last works, and local tradition holds that he died at Maser while working on it. Since 1996 the villa has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
Getting there
The villa stands at Maser in the province of Treviso, about 7 km from Montebelluna. The nearest airport is Treviso (TSF), about 25 km away.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Brion tomb 8.3 km · mausoleum
- Ponte Vecchio, Bassano 19.7 km · covered-bridge
- Prosecco Hills of Conegliano and Valdobbiadene 24.9 km · vineyard-landscape
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Villa Barbaro, also known as the Villa di Maser, is a large villa at Maser in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It was designed and built by the Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, with frescos by Paolo Veronese and sculptures by Alessandro Vittoria, for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia and ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I of England and his brother Marcantonio, an ambassador to King Charles IX of France. The villa was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by UNESCO in 1996.
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