The Giotto's frescoes and the Palladio's mark

This route is subject to variations, for the whole day or even half.

The first interesting place we find on the path is the Villa Foscari, known as "La Malcontenta" because of the legend of an unfortunate damsel who was exiled in that villa because of her reluctance on marital issues.
The villa is one of two buildings designed by Andrea Palladio on the Brenta River, but unfortunately the second one has been lost.
Wonderfully located in a bend of the Brenta River, a few kilometers from the fifteenth-century "Locks of Moranzani" that govern its mouth, the "Malcontenta" offers picturesque views from the road. To visit the sumptuous interior a reservation is needed.

The house stands on a high base, which separates the main floor from its moist soil and gives glory to the building raised on a podium like an ancient temple. The Opera is a particularly effective demonstration of the Palladian skill in getting monumental effects with bricks and plaster, reducing the use of marble as much as possible to the sculptural details. It's also a wonderful example of integration between Architecture and Nature according to the classical standards.

If Palladio actually built only two works in this area, at the window we will see dozens of holiday and exile homes of the Venetian Aristocracy, mostly built in the Renaissance and Neoclassical style, until we reach the next suggested stage: The Villa Reale (Royal Mansion) in Stra.

Built in about the 1750’s by the Venetian nobles Alvise and Almorò Pisani, Doge, with the architects Girolamo Frigimelica and Francesco Maria Preti, this villa and its park are among the most sumptuous places of Italy.
The 114 internal rooms contain works of great masters of that period, such as Fabio Canal, Jacopo Guarana, Andrea Brustolon, Gian Battista Tiepolo, Giovanni Colonna Mengozzi...
The Villa Reale in Strà housed important personalities of the past: it still contains the bed and the blanket where Napoleon Bonaparte slept. Mussolini and Hitler met here for the first time in 1934.
The great maze of hedges in the garden, by which Gabriele D'Annunzio was inspired for the scene of the labyrinth described in his novel "The Fire", and the immense sculptural fountain, the pool of which is so large to be used for hydrodynamical testing by Civil Engineers, are particularly striking.

Left the magnificent halls of Stra, we continue to drive to see the catalogue of Villas in the Brenta River until Padua, where we see the chromatic and mystic harmony which Giotto painted on the walls and ceilings of the Scrovegni Chapel.

The architecture of the Chapel is very simple: a rectangular room with a barrel vault, an elegant Gothic three-mullioned window in the façade, high and narrow windows on the south wall, a polygonal apse which raises upon the belfry.
The Scrovegni Chapel shows the most complete cycle of frescoes created by the great Tuscan master in his maturity, completed in 1306.
The painting cycle of the Chapel has been developed into three main themes: the episodes from the life of the Saints Joachim and Anna (scenes 1-6), the episodes from the life of Mary (scenes 7-13) and the episodes of life and death of Christ.
Further down we can admire panels illustrating the Allegories of Vices and Virtues.

If you are available more than half-day, now you can decide to continue the journey to Vicenza to meet other great works by Palladio as "La Rotonda" and the Basilica, or visit the Gipsoteca by Canova in Possagno, or go to the Vicentina countryside for wine tasting in the prestigious local wineries, or even reach Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet, to visit the historic sites with the remains of the Roman Empire and taste the wines producted in its the volcanic hills...