Overlooking via Muzzana is Villa Castellani Fancon, a very old palace built on the 15th-century estates owned by the Muzan family.
Francesco Muzan, a Lombard nobleman, moved to Malo in the 15th century, introducing numerous innovations and technical details related to agriculture, sericulture, and silk processing, which at that time was done at the family level.
By the early 16th century, there were two palaces, but towards the middle of the century, they were joined and enlarged.
From the 17th century, the Muzan family experienced a slow decline from which they could not recover. The last descendants disappeared during the 18th century, and the rapidly ascending Castel-lani family gradually acquired all the Muzan properties, including the palace.
In 1775, the building took on its current appearance, except for the facade facing south, towards the street, which was commissioned in 1860 to Luigi Dalla Vecchia, an engineer associated with the Vicentine neoclassical culture. After suffering looting during the Napoleonic period, occupations during the world wars, and damage caused by a fire, it was purchased in 1977 by the Fancon family, who subjected it to a grand restoration intervention.
The interiors still show the beauty of a bygone era in the paintings and ceilings; portraits and busts of illustrious men adorn it.
The outbuildings of the villa house a collection of about 250 Moto Guzzi motorcycles owned by Mr. Ernesto Fancon. These are production motorcycles ranging from 1928 to 1960, all used, thus each with its own history.
Two pieces testify to the continuity of Guzzi production even during the Second World War: the Alce and the Super Alce.
In front of the villa, an iron gate allows access to a romantic garden designed by architect Antonio Care-garo Negrin.
It is conceived in a perspective play of paths, waters, and rocky walls, with uneven ground and dense vegetation that reflects the ideal of spontaneous nature, free from constraints.
Originally, the park was to be adorned and made picturesque by fake ruins and oriental pavilions, designed by the architect, which are now lost.
Initially, there were four broli of the villa, areas of land cultivated with fruit trees. The one now included in the 18th-century internal garden still boasts the presence of pears, apples, plums, cherries, and various species of vines. A second brolo, one of the oldest in Malo, documented as early as the 15th century and retaining its original walls, is open to the public with an entrance from via Porto. It is here that, from the mid-18th century, the Castellani intensified some plantations; fruits produced with careful selections, but also mulberry trees, whose leaves serve as food for silkworms.
Under the portico, the Castellani organized one of the first silk mills in Malo. Currently, the brolo hosts an interesting botanical garden for educational purposes where tree species have been planted that can trace their appearances on earth and, historically, characterized the territory of Malo.
