Villa Grimani Valmarana stands on a medieval castle belonging to the Delesmanini family, who ceded the land on which the villa stands to Enrico Scrovegni. In 1502 the villa, “a large house in masonry with a courtyard all around enclosed by a wall with a few fields near the Brenta River,” was sold to the patriarch of Aquileia Domenico Grimani; in the early 1600s the villa followed a young Grimani who married Vettor Calergi, scion of a powerful Venetian patrician family.
Inherited in 1738 by Nicolo Vendramin, his great-granddaughter Elena Marina Maria Vendramin-Calergi married Count Andrea Valmarana, who left her a widow in 1861. In her will, the countess bequeathed the villa to the municipality of Noventa Padovana with the obligation to establish a school for deaf-mute girls and not to move the portrait of the countess and her husband from its original location.
Inside the villa are extensive eighteenth-century fresco ensembles and Rococo chinoiserie decorations that embellish the main floor works by set designer and painter Andrea Urbani.
Behind the villa passed the Brenta River; in fact, originally, the facade was at the rear of the present villa.
Duration of the tour: about 1 hour
In collaboration with APS Sorsi d'Arte.
