Villa Pisani
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- For the villas by Andrea Palladio, see Villa Pisani (Montagnana) or Villa Pisani (Bagnolo)
Villa Pisani is a late baroque villa at Stra, in the mainland of the Veneto, northern Italy. It was begun in the early 1700s on commission by the noble Venetian Pisani family. Alvise Pisani, its most prominent member, was appointed doge in 1735. The initial models of the palace by Paduan architect Girolamo Frigimelica still exist, but the design of the main building was ultimately completed by Francesco Maria Preti.
From the outside, the exuberant facade of the oversized palace, attempting to emulate Versailles, appears to command the site, fronting the Brenta canal some 20 miles from Venice.
The broad façade is topped with statuary, and presents exuberantly decorated center entrance with monumental columns shouldered by caryatids. It shelters a large complex with two inner courts and acres of gardens, stables, and maze. The most stunning decoration in the massive frescoed ceiling by Giovanni Tiepolo (1760-1762) depicting the Glory of the Pisani family [1]. Additional frescoes and paintings are by his son Gian Domenico Tiepolo, Crostato, Jacopo Guarana, Jacopo Amigoni, P.A. Novelli, and Gaspare Diziani. The bombastic allusions of the ceiling echo hollow in the now uninhabited shell of a palace. The remainder of its nearly 100 rooms are now eerily empty; on the first floor there are several rooms with furniture of the 18th and 19th century.
Deserted by its eponymous family, the villa has had a share of notable and infamous visitors: Napoleon who acquired the villa in 1807. It has been a national monument since 1882. Here Hitler first conferred with Mussolini in 1934.
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