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Excerpt from “Gardens of Veneto Villas”, by Camilla Zanarotti, Silvana Editoriale.

They originally date back to the seventeenth century when the Venetian Barbarigo family decided to build a residence worthy of their rank here. Work was carried out in several stages from the fourth decade of the seventeenth century until the early eighteenth century, given impetus by Antonio Barbarigo, Procurator of San Marco from 1697, and brother of Gregorio, Bishop of Padua.

The seventeenth-century gardens, some of the most extraordinary and best-preserved, were regularly divided through a system of orthogonal avenues. Along the east-west axis, which begins at the monumental Diana Gateway, lies a succession of water features and fish ponds, which are richly sculpted and reminiscent of Roman Baroque gardens.

South of the fish ponds, the famous maze is one of the esoteric elements suggested by the gardens, linked to the neo-Platonic philosophical ideals dear to their designer. In the early nineteenth century, the property was inherited by Lodovico Martinengo da Barco, who was responsible for the landscape-style additions to the gardens. In 1930, the complex passed into the hands of the Pizzoni Ardemani counts, the current owners who undertook the restoration of the garden.

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