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

We owe this beautiful garden to the extraordinary figure of the industrial patron and philanthropist, Alessandro Rossi. In 1859, he commissioned the architect Antonio Caregaro Negrin to design the area in front of the historic “Francesco Rossi 1817” woollen mill. In this small space, of approximately 5,980 square yards, which was the crossroads between the production buildings, the architect interpreted his patron’s ideal of industrial “civilisation” and created an ambitious iconographic programme for the gardens.
Theatrically positioned at the top of a gentle slope, caves open up behind the greenhouse and are linked to the top of the hill by stairs carved into the rock. This marks the start of an elaborate interweaving of pathways that lead to the bridge, the bastion of the belvedere and the neo-Gothic architecture of the woodland on the hillside.

The vertical nature of the composition is accentuated, and the skilful arrangement of the masses of vegetation directs the gaze towards hills outside the gardens. The distinctive bell tower of the sixteenth-century church of San Rocco, upstream of the complex, was added by Caregaro Negrin as a focal point for the entire composition.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)