Historical gardens, ancient parks, and green geometries
The county of Padua is rich in historical gardens, which embody the civilization and the culture that characterised the territory of Padua in the past centuries and, more specifically, the search for symbiosis between the interventions of man and natural landscape.
The park of Villa Barbarigo at Valsanzibio, among the most typical places in the Veneto, was made in the 17th century. Set in a wonderful hilly landscape this garden, designed in the second half of 1600s upon order of the noble family Barbarigo, is organized by focal and panoramic points as the large boxwood maze, the imposing Baths of Diana, the Rabbit Island, the large fish ponds, three lakes, 16 fountains, the statue of Time and 70 statues more.
The high symbolic content that permeates the whole complex was inspired by Gregorio Barbarigo, Bishop of Padua, then Cardinal and later canonized. The tour in the park is designed as a symbolic walk in life, the life of man heading to purification and Salvation.
Link to the official site of Giardino di Valsanzibio.
The amazing colour effects of roses blooming characterise the spring months at Villa Emo, located at Rivella di Monselice. Two long fish ponds bordered with water aurums and irises, overflowing with water lilies and crowned with two large rose borders precisely define the edges of the geometrical garden in front of the villa, while a long gallery of hornbeams and neat boxwood geometries form its never changing design.
Link to the official site of Villa Emo di Rivella.
Surrounded by a wonderful eight-hectare park, Villa Miari de Cumani, at S. Elena d'Este, looks like a castle-villa because of its Ghibelline crenellated walls and the imposing tower. The large complex includes the landlord house, cottages, a greenhouse, a hermitage, the Nimphaeum, a large four-sided orchard with a fish pond and the park created in 1855 by architect Paoletti, a follower of Jappelli, with a grotto, a small lake and other decorative architectural elements.
The lush green belt that surrounds Villa Pisani-Scalabrin at Vescovana was praised highly in the journal "Holidays spent on a Doge's farm" by the English writer Margaret Symonds, who spent some time here in 1880. The visit to the Park, divided into an Italian Garden and a romantic English landscape Park with a neo-gothic chapel, is particularly charming in spring and early summer, when the flowerbeds forming a fan around the central fountain flourish with a huge variety of flowers.
Link to the official site of Villa Pisani Scalabrin
Tall plane-trees and century-old oaks mark the path in the wonderful Frassanelle Park, designed in its current shape by Earl Alessandro Papafava (1784-1861) and then further organised by Alberto Papafava dei Carraresi (1833-1903), a landscape painter. The park fuses elements from the Anglo-Saxon garden with elements from the romantic garden that spread in the Veneto under the influence of Giuseppe Jappelli. Fascination is exerted by the grottos, where light and shade play with scenographic mastery.
The vast complex of the Castle of S. Pelagio at Due Carrare, also known for the museum of flying devices (Museo dell'Aria e del Volo) housed in its old rooms, includes a large garden with a small lake, a maze and an ice-house. The garden includes the official garden with a water lily pond, the secret garden with century-old trees and a huge variety of scented plants, a rich orchard with the curious Biricoccolo (Apricot violet), the Minotaur maze, the seaplane lake, and the aeronautic walk among the species of trees that provided the wood with which aviators built their planes.
Link to the official site of the Castle of S. Pelagio
In the north of the county of Padua, in the area that borders with the counties of Vicenza and Treviso, two vast parks rise that frame two wonderful Venetian villas: Villa Contarini at Piazzola sul Brenta and Ca' Marcello at Levada di Piombino Dese.
Villa Contarini, one of the most impressive in the Veneto, has a huge English landscape park that extends over a green area of 50 hectares, with shaded paths and a 5-hectare artificial lake, in the centre of which there emerges a wooded island. The area is particularly important for its fauna, with dozens of species of non-migratory and migratory birds nesting here regularly: grey herons, cormorants, kingfishers, and woodpeckers.
Link to the official site of Villa Contarini
Luxuriant and complex looks the historical garden of Ca' Marcello, too, a noble mansion still inhabited by the descendants of the family that had it built in the 16th century. The front garden is Italian style with a fountain, flower tricks, meadows, hedges, and mythological statues. The different flower plants in the garden bloom one after the other from April to October (forsythia, magnolia, viburnum, and mahonia are the main plants).
In the extended and lush English landscape park that surrounds the villa, in the long lanes lined by hornbeams, limes, and British oaks, visitors can see some species of trees that are extremely rare because of their age: among these a hornbeam and a tulip-tree, both three-hundred years old and among the oldest in the Veneto; and century-old, healthy lime, red beech, and plane-tree. The garden is crowned by a dovecote tower, the chapel of the noble family and a large expanse of water, the Fish Pond. Finally some parts of the park are kept as a wood, with small lanes, century-old trees and romantic paths decorated with statues of animals and real or fairy characters, as the bizarre series of dwarves and the musician monkeys.
Link to the official site of Ca' Marcello
(we wish to thank www.turismopadova.it for their kind collaboration)
