Riviera del Brenta Site Features

Tiepolo's ceiling at Villa Pisani

The ballroom carries Giambattista Tiepolo's Apotheosis of the Pisani Family of 1761-62, one of his last major works in Italy before he left for Madrid -- a single vast illusionistic sky with the family borne up into it.

The labyrinth

Villa Pisani's garden holds one of the few surviving 18th-century hedge mazes in Italy, with a small central tower reached only by solving it. It is a genuine maze rather than a decorative parterre, and it is easy to spend longer in it than intended.

La Malcontenta's name

Villa Foscari's nickname is usually explained by a story about a Foscari wife confined here against her will. The likelier origin is duller and older than the villa: malcontenta appears as a local place name for the marshy ground before the house was built.

The burchiello

The passenger barge that carried Venetians upriver has been revived as a tourist boat running the same route, stopping at villas along the way -- the closest surviving version of how the riviera was originally used.