VILLA TIEPOLO PASSI
Villa Tiepolo Passi's history dates back to the beginning of the 16th century, when the powerful Tiepolo family acquired land on the mainland and occupied the site of the Casteo of Carbonera, an ancient Paleo-Venetian hill fort. As was often the case of such hill forts - simple landfills about three meters above the level of the surrounding countryside -, this one is oriented according to the solstices and equinoxes, and thus served as a sundial. In the Roman era it became a castrum, or a military garrison, strategic in that it was equidistant from th Sile River, the city of Treviso and the Via Claudia Augusta road. When the Tiepolo arrived,they maintained the place's characteristics and built the Villa, starting with storehouses, granaries and stalls; then, in the 17th century, Ermolao Tiepolo commissioned the main house and the "barchessa" outbuildings, early mannerist Venetian Baroque structures in keeping with the style and stylistic elements of Vincenzo Scamozzi, a student of Palladio. Over the centuries, the house was embellished by famous artists: the Torretti sculptors, Giuseppe Bernardi and his nephew Ferrari, who had the young Canova as an apprentice in their workshop; Pietro Antonio Cerva, known as Il Bolognese, a Baroque painter who frescoed the entire "noble" first floor of the main house and the barchesse between 1674 and 1675; Giovanbattista Canal, who frescoed the family chapel according to the canons of the Tiepolo school of painters (1775); and Francesco Frigimelica il Vecchio, whose painting can be admired in the Villa's Portego. In the Napoleonic era, the Villa was inherited by the noble Venetian family, and shortly thereafter was passed by families ties to the Passi de Presposulo Counts, and old Bergamo family, which still resides there. During the Great War, the Villa became a surgical hospital run by the Italian Red Cross. King Vittorio Emanuele and generals Diaz and Cadorna stayed there.
Today the Villa is the hub of an agricultural estate, and a destination for cultural tourism and exclusive events.
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