Venice

The riviera del Brenta

Venice built its ancient fortunes on the sea but at one stage it had to cope with two major new factors: competition from the Atlantic nations after the discovery of America and the threat of the Turkish Empire in the Mediterranean. That is why Venice focused greater attention on its possessions on the mainland, giving a boost to farming and the production of wool and silk, among others. The villa was the fulcrum of this new phase and it combined the functions of the master’s residence and the farm, with all the activities, initially craft and later industrial, linked to it. The greatest expression of this is the Riviera del Brenta, the navigable canal that links Padua to the Venetian lagoon. Its banks are lined with hundreds of villas, custodians of the memory of a unique period of wealth and social activity. The Riviera can easily be visited by car but a special outing is on board the Burchiello, the visitor boat that stops at the finest villas and then arrives a short distance from Piazza San Marco.

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