The Veneto is all about the villas, including aristocratic B&B

Understanding Venice without exploring the Veneto is like claiming you’ve toured England when you haven’t left London, or insisting you’ve seen the States when you haven’t ventured away from the coasts.

Yet I suspect the majority of tourists ticking Venice off their must see list don’t even what the Veneto is, much less have plans to visit it.

First things first. Veneto in modern language is one of the 20 official regions of Italy; it’s the state over which Venice is the capital. For centuries, when Venice ruled sea lanes and possessed a far-flung empire, the Veneto was the homeland that supplied food, wine, people and breathing space to the imperial city. The Veneto is home to several towns famous in their own right … Verona, Vicenza, Padua … and offers sporty types both the glories of Lake Garda and the ski resort of Cortina d’Ampezzo. Wine lovers find delight here in the Ring of Prosecco. If you share my love of architecture and art history, there’s one thing that tops any list of Veneto attractions: villas.

The city of Venice is where the money got made, but Venice was … and still is … both crowded and brutally hot in the summer. The rich got out. Most of them headed for the foothills of the mountains, where the air was cooler and breezes more frequent. In the mid 1500s, anyone who was anyone hired one Andrea Palladio to build their country house. Given that a line of his masterworks was studded between our stay on Mazzorbo and the wedding we were attending in Trento, I couldn’t miss the chance for a visit.

The day’s objective was the Villa Barbaro, also known as the Villa di Maser. I’d seen it many years ago but wanted to return. I remembered it as my favourite of all the Palladian villas I’ve seen. It has all the characteristics you expect: the restrained, elegant classicism; the clever architecture designed to capture breezes and filter light; great views; an accumulation of a few centuries of aristocratic Italian furnishings, cheerful frescoes. The last are what make the Villa Barbaro so exceptional. While arguably the world’s most influential architect designed the building, one of the age’s greatest painters did the walls. It’s one hell of a double act. Most experts consider this Paolo Veronese’s best cycle of frescoes, and it still delivers room after room of pure joy. (I suspect they’ve been restored since I first saw them, as their pastel candy glory is almost eye watering.)

The villa is somewhat unusual in shape: a long axial spine with a central wing jutting forward and two side wings pushing back from the ends. From the air it looks a bit like a boxy, squashed letter “Y”, but from the front you only see that long arcade with a temple-like, pedimented mass coming out from the middle. It’s framed with formal gardens on each side and the classic Palladian staircase flanked with classical sculpture coming down from the middle. One assumes all these rich and powerful Venetians found it richly satisfying to live in buildings that look like places where gods were honoured and worshipped.

Your approach along the spine immediately demonstrates the genius of the place: you’re in a logia under arches two stories high, offering you cool shade and a place from which to survey the vineyards stretching below. On the left edge of your vision, Palladio treats you to the dome of the family chapel, a miniature version of his grand churches in Venice. The high walls behind you catch and disperse the breeze. Where this arcade intersects with the centre clock of the house there’s a grand staircase up to the “piano nobile”. At the top, you enter into the main reception room. It’s flooded with light, yet kept cool by marble floors and an abundance of tall windows. These weren’t open … I suspect they’re more careful about humidity with the paintings these days … but you can see how everything is designed to stay cool. 

At the back of this long cross-section is a rare example of a Palladian-designed garden feature. A curving arcade carved as a grotto with sea creatures and mythological beings frames a water feature. It’s all built close up against a rising hillside full of trees. It not only looks good; it would have been another strategy to keep the temperatures down in the house.

Inside, every room offers a playful mix of Veronese’s pastoral landscapes, people and military equipment. All are at least partially in the Trompe-l'œil or “fool the eye” style. The landscapes look like you’ve stumbled upon another window, and have found a new view of what lies outside. The lances and flags look like they’ve been abandoned in corners by conquering heroes just home from the front. 

Servants peep out doors. The family gazes down in benevolent welcome. A pet spaniel waits for a treat. And those are just the walls. Look up and you get a panoply of classical gods doing whatever frolicking is appropriate for the room below: eating, making wine, making love. Toward the back of that main hall you can look down an enfilade of rooms on each side, filling that main axis of the house. A painting at the end of one hall is a life sized self-portrait of Veronese seemingly striding in your direction. On the other end, at the far side of the house, is his wife … smiling at him, and you, across the centuries. 

Having great art hanging on a wall is one thing, but being completely surrounded by it so you feel you’re inside of it is something completely different. I suspect that Veronese would have been very excited to play with virtual reality environments, because he created one here in 1560.

After marvelling at the artistic masterpiece of one aristocratic villa, we were off to stay in another.

Villa Stecchini isn’t by Palladio but follows that same tradition of gracious, aristocratic country piles. Its architecture isn’t as showy: a big, traditional block with an arcaded service wing forming an “L”. to one side, a family chapel to the other and a large, rectangular formal water feature out front fed by a statue of Neptune standing over a cheerfully gurgling cascade. Lawns stretch out in every direction, a few pens of farm animals entertain children, vegetable plots and fruit trees supply the table. Ducks, peacocks and a few genial old family dogs stroll at will. It’s hard to believe it’s not another admission-charging attraction but no … it’s a B&B.

There are seven different suites integrated seamlessly into the fabric of the house. Other than a guest book and some business cards on the central hall table, there’s no sign that you’re in a commercial establishment. The ground floor greets you with an enormous hall dominated by an exquisite Venetian chandelier and decorated with big paintings of other country estates that were once under the family’s ownership. Your hostess Carlotta doesn’t have a title, but she greets you with the genial grace with which the contessas in her family tree would have directed great balls. Up a dignified Renaissance stair lies another hall on the same floor plan, this one hung with fascinating scenes of the great set pieces of the Venetian year, like Carnevale and the ceremonial marriage of the Doge to the sea. You’ll also notice a collection of small, lovely sculptures in white marble. Turns out Canova was a local, this family supported his workshop and these are maquettes he used to teach his apprentices. Balconies at either end of the room offer dramatic views on Neptune’s pond on one side, olive groves, countryside and the foothills of the mountains on the other. 

 Our suite was off this hall. It’s named the Lyric Room after Carlotta’s great grandmother, an opera singer whose programme from her appearance at La Fenice hangs outside. The furniture is grand but comfortable, the decor carrying on the stately look of the halls. I had to check to make sure they hadn’t stolen Veronese’s hunting dogs from the Louvre; a convincing reproduction hangs above the bed and was a happy link to the day’s earlier wonders. A top quality mattress and decent pillows made for an enormous improvement on the sleep quality at Venissa over the three preceding nights.

This is the kind of place you just want to linger and drink it all in. We arrived mid-afternoon rather than pushing on for additional sightseeing (you could easily see the Villa Emo on the same day as Barbaro), I spent the time sitting quietly in the garden next to the water feature, communing with the ducks and trying to capture the villa in the fading light.Though the town of Bassano is nearby and full of dining options, we delighted in the realisation that we didn’t have to leave. The family runs a small trattoria in the wine cellars under the house (where you also have your breakfast). We enjoyed a beautiful spread of ham, cheese, oil and bread, followed by a pear and walnut risotto that we decided we needed to try back home with … heresy no doubt … perhaps a finishing touch of blue cheese. Uncharacteristically, we surrendered after two courses. The unending waves of food were doing even my prodigious appetite in.

One of Carlotta’s team did, however, talk us into a glass of mead before bed. I think of mead as a Viking and Anglo-Saxon tradition, but evidently there’s a history of mead making in this honey-producing region, and the family is trying to bring it back. Most mead I’ve had is too thick. Too sweet. Like drinking the mineral waters at Bath, it’s an entertaining nod to history but not something you want to incorporate into modern life. Not this stuff. It’s complex. Elegant. Subtle notes of spices with the sweetness of a very light desert wine. We were blown away and promptly bought a bottle. Had we driven, we would have bought a case. It was the best thing I drank all week. (Given the parade of spritzes I samples, that’s a big statement.)

I savoured another walk around the grounds the next morning, delighting in the way the original garden designers worked the water in to the garden so channels flow from one level to another offering the sound of fountains from most places, even if you can’t see the water. Ripe figs were there for picking off the trees. Tomatoes glowed red on their vines. The mountains in the distance were a deep blue green, not yet bleached by the day’s heat haze. It was all quite idyllic.

But, sadly, it was only a one-night stop. We had a wedding to get to, so moved on after breakfast. It’s worth noting, however, that there is an enormous amount to see in this area and the Villa Stecchini would be an ideal place to spend multiple nights. The UNESCO World Heritage Site of “Vicenza and the Palladian Villas” includes 23 Palladian buildings in that town, less than 40 minutes away, and 24 villas in the surrounding area. (Read my story on Vicenza and the Villa Rotonda here.) That’s enough to keep any culture vulture busy for a while, especially since several villas are attached to modern vineyards offering tastings. Villa Di Maser (Barbaro) is one. My next stop with more time would have been Villa Angarano with a winery run by five sisters.  

If you get tired of aristocratic houses, Villa Stecchini’s closest town of Bassano is the world centre of grappa production. It offers a tasting experience every few shop fronts, with yet another charmingly historic town centre. It has a famously gorgeous bridge over the river Brenta that’s also a milestone in civic engineering. It’s Palladio again, this time turning his genius to surviving floods rather than capturing breezes. The Brenta turns into a raging torrent in the spring and eventually wiped out the pillars of every bridge built. Palladio figured out that a series of thin, blade-like supports would be strong enough to hold up the span while insubstantial enough to let the water through with little resistance. And so a covered wooden bridge as venerable as the one in Lucerne is held aloft on a design that looks as modern as a Norman Foster building. 

Villa Stecchini is just over an hour from either Verona or Venice airport, offering a sophisticated and easy weekend break from the UK full of such “off the beaten track” pleasures. Rooms range from €85 to €170, with the larger ones accommodating up to five people. It’s an aristocratic experience for an amazingly modest price.

Verona Day Trip No. 1: The architectural delights of Vicenza

You are unlikely to have heard of Vicenza, or to have any reason to visit, unless you are a devotee of the history of Western architecture. In that case, this is sacred ground. The town’s most famous son was Andrea Palladio, the man who almost single-handedly created and defined the neo-classicism that went on to dominate everything from the English country house to global government buildings to modern housing estates and offices. 

Vicenza is architecture ground zero, filled with famous buildings Palladio designed.

We started in Vicenza’s main square, dominated by the Basilica Palladiana. Palladio won a contest to restore a crumbling gothic town hall and came up with a radical solution to skin the whole thing with a new exterior. Pristine white marble instead of red brick. Round arches and the clean lines of classical columns rather than pointed arches and fiddly minarets. A progression of those round arches is flanked by rectangular openings on each side … what came to be called a Palladian window. Repeated, these form an arcade on the ground floor and a loggia above. Scores of different offices and shops could be housed inside, but they’d all be unified by this elegant exterior that made the whole thing look like Ancient Rome come back to life. Heroic classical statues stand along the roofline, as if Olympian spectators are viewing life in the city below. It is a beguilingly beautiful construction.

A short walk away is a building that would be as influential on the architecture of entertainment as the Basilica was on government. The Teatro Olimpico was the first indoor theatre built in the Renaissance and arguably the first purpose-built one since classical times. Theatre had been an integral part of the cultural life of Greece and Rome, performed in grand, dedicated spaces. After the collapse of empire it devolved to religious plays put on in the street or churches, or small performances in rulers' homes. The Teatro Olimpico was a return to the grandeur of the past. 

Palladio built a three-level classical screen behind the stage, re-creating exactly what you would have seen in the great theatres of Greece and Rome. And the ruins of which tourists still flock to see in places like Athens, Taormina or Jerash (Jordan). The semi-circular seating area is pulled right from those models as well, with an impressive colonnade topped with statuary ringing the back. While those ancient theatres were open air, the great Palladian innovation was building the whole thing inside, with a roof painted to look like the sky. 

Three arches in the screen behind the stage show off scenery that plays tricks with perspective, with city streets seeming to dwindle to a distant vanishing point even though it’s actually only a few feet deep.  Outside the theatre space there are a couple of grand, frescoed rooms for attendees to mix and mingle; clearly the fore-runner of the bars ready to serve up interval drinks. The elegance and sophistication of this space is breath-taking, as is the realisation that it’s still fit for theatrical purpose more than 500 years after its construction. It’s even more impressive when you consider that London, with its outsized influence on the history of European drama, didn’t have its first purpose-built theatre for almost 100 years after the Olimpico opened, and it would be longer before a British theatre got a roof.

My passion for Palladio started not with government buildings or theaters but with the English country house, and it was our jaunt to the Villa Rotonda that really made my day. About a mile and a half outside of town, perched on a hill overlooking the river Bacchiglione and gentle agricultural lands, this rigorously symmetrical country house became the model for countless buildings around the world. 18th century English aristocrats became particularly obsessed: Chiswick House, just outside London, and the Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard are almost direct copies, and indirect influence is obvious up and down the country. After three decades of serious English country house exploration, it was so exciting to finally be here.

The building is a gem set within its landscape. From the distance it appears more of a lost, perfectly preserved temple than a house. The entry is one of ceremonial grandeur, up a sunken avenue of roses, then the path divides in two around a perfect oval of manicured lawn before imposing steps rise between guardian statues to a portico beneath an austere pediment held aloft by six elegant ionic columns. A dome rises behind. What's distinctive about the Villa Rotonda is that this is the facade on all four sides. Each portico has a central door opening into a rectangular hall that leads to a round, double-height room beneath the dome. In between the entrance halls are living rooms in each corner, while four circular stairs off the rotonda lead to rooms upstairs. (Presumably bedrooms, through you don't get to see these.)

The tile and marble floors, the high ceilings and the cross-breezes that come through if you open all the doors create perfect natural air conditioning. It was blazing outside, but the interiors were deliciously cool. Exactly the retreat from the baking cities that rich Italian landowners were after. The irony is that the English fell for a style that is fundamentally opposed to their climate. A bit like modern London restaurants trying to create cozy alfresco dining areas when they need heaters most of the year and traffic is whizzing by just a meter away, Palladian architecture in England was all about conjuring memories of happy, sunny places visited on special holidays. Despite the challenges of heating them, the neo-classical mansion set in a carefully-designed pastoral idyll was repeated so many times that people think of it as fundamentally English. But it all started in Vicenza.

Bluntly, there's not that much to see at Villa Rotonda and if you don't have that context in mind it might even be a bit underwhelming. But it's a lovely place and worth lingering. There are some pretty gardens around the house, benches beneath shaded porticos and places to spread out on the lawn beneath the trees. Some in our party read. Some sketched. We made an afternoon of it. If you wander this way, you'll get the greatest enjoyment by doing the same. 

Do check opening times. Unlike the many Palladian buildings in the town centre you can look at from the outside 24/7, the Villa is usually closed for several hours for lunch. Plan accordingly, as it's on a country lane and there is nothing close by in which to while away your time.