This website presents an English translation of Le ville venete in bici [Venetian Villas on Bicycle], part of an extensive website created and maintained by Paolo Bonavoglia, a high school math teacher from Venice, Italy, who in his spare time is an avid biker, a photographer and a wannabe architect. His complete website can be viewed at bicycle.bonavoglia.eu and consists of well-over 300 webpages covering many aspects of bicycle touring [cicloturismo] and describing bike routes throughout Europe and more specifically Northern Italy.
We created this stand-alone website so that English-speaking travelers to Italy, who wish to visit Palladio and other villas of the Veneto on bicycle, will have a single resource that can be referenced easily when traveling. To that end, each page includes a map indicating the exact location of the villa and its nearest train station[s]. For an overall interactive map of the Veneto, showing all these villas and many more, please see this custom Google map, and as of February 2012, Paolo’s webpage also includes an overall map of the Veneto with all the villas indicated.
The primary text of this website was researched and written by Paolo Bonavoglia and translated into English by Richard Bosch Architect. The majority of photos are also by Paolo Bonavoglia. The maps were prepared by Richard Bosch. Other resources have been assimilated and credited as appropriate.
As Paolo states in his introduction: “The bicycle is, among other things, an ideal way to visit the numerous villas that are to be found within the Veneto and Friuli regions. There are so many: many along the Brenta River and Canal, many on the flat, coastal plain, and many in the hills and foothills.
“Along with other factors they may have in common: they are almost always country houses built between the 16th and 18th centuries on behalf of this or that family of the Venetian aristocracy. The style was defined by Palladio who designed and constructed many of these villas that in turn inspired many others.”
A note about the lack of alphabetical order
These pages were created in the same sequence that the villas were visited over the past 16 years, and more intently over the past four years. Paolo’s website now has a sortable database that can be used. This website also will introduce an alphabetized list in August 2015.
A note about the locational maps
A note about drawings
It is the intent, over time, to include sketches and drawings, as available, especially of the Palladio villas. If viewers to this site know of sketches or drawings that are already available and wish to share them please email that information to Richard Bosch Architect. All material will be properly credited. RB
For those wanting to take a day off from biking:
The “Burchiello” - the canal boat that runs between Padova and Fusina - is an excellent way to visit three of the villas on this page - Villa Pisani, Villa Seriman and Villa Foscari “la Malcontenta” - and to see many more from the upper deck.
From the upper deck one can see the following 14 additional villas:
The Burchiello can be reached by taking the train to Padova or taking the ferry that runs between the Zattere in Venice to Fusina. Villas that are visited include: Villa Pisani, Villa Seriman and Villa Foscari “La Malcontenta”.
Bike routes other than visiting villas
Other bike routes in Italy, described by Paolo Bonavoglia, and that have been translated into English [or in process]:
Here are other bike routes, described by Paolo Bonavoglia, but outside of Italy, all translated into English:
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•Bicycling in Czechia [aka Czech Republic]
Last update October 26, 2015
Bibliography
Palladio villas
Andrea Palladio [translated by Isaac Ware 1738], The Four Books of Architecture, Dover, New York 1965
Vincent Scully, The Villas of Palladio, Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1987
Lionello Puppi [translated by Pearl Sanders], Andrea Palladio, Electa Editrice, Venice 1973
Bruce Boucher, Andrea Palladio The Architect in His Time, Abbeville Press, New York 1998
Exhibit catalog, Palladio, Canova, Treviso 1981
Michele Furnari, Formal Design in Renaissance Architecture from Brunelleschi to Palladio, Rizzoli, Milano 1995, pp 171 – 172 [Villa Barbaro, Villa la Rotonda]
Wolfgang Lotz [edited by Deborah Howard], Architettura in Italia 1500 1600, Rizzoli, Milano 1997, pp 147 – 157 [in Italian][Villa Barbaro, Villa Pojana, Villa la Rotonda]
James Ackerman, The Villa, Form and Ideology of Country Houses, Thames and Hudson, London 1990 pp 89 – 107
Paul Van der Ree, Gerrit Smienk, Clemens Steenbergen, Italian Villas and Gardens, Prestel, Munich 1993 pp 227 - 269 [Villa Barbaro pp 242, Villa Contarini pp 246, Villa Cornaro pp 251, Villa Emo pp 255, Villa Godi pp 259, Villa Piovene pp 262, Villa Rotonda pp 265]
Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA 1985 pp 1 – 27
Villa Cornaro, only
Check out Sally Gable’s fascinating book: Palladian Days: Finding a New Life in a Venetian Country House, which is extremely interesting and revealing about the reality of taking ownership of a Palladio villa, including rotting wooden beams and scorpions within the walls. None of your usual architectural historian BS.
Venetian villas in general
Franco Borsi and Geno Pampaloni [editors], Ville e Giardini in the series Monumenti d’Italia, Istituto Geografico de Agostini 1984, pp 138 – 242 [in Italian]
Colin Rowe and Leon Satkowski, Italian Architecture of the 16th Century, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2002 pp 195 – 199 [Sansovino: Villa Garzoni and Sanmicheli: Villa la Soranza - demolished in 1818]
Georgina Masson, Italian Villas and Palaces, Abrams, 1966, pp 88 – 117
