A few steps from the Badoèra, almost on an island between the Scortico and a small canal, stands a less famous villa. Yet it is bound up with one of the most stirring chapters of the Risorgimento in the Veneto, the struggle for Italian unity and independence.
The building grew out of the remodelling of an older house belonging to the Loredan family. In 1541 Vincenzo Grimani married Lucrezia Loredan. Work began around the middle of the 16th century and was finished by about 1555–1556.
A villa without a signature
The designer’s name is not known. The sources detect influences from Ferrara, Mantua and Palladio, and its relationship with nearby Villa Badoer is still debated.
The piano nobile, the grand main floor, rises above a rusticated base, with a portico and two side staircases. Inside, frescoes by an unknown hand weave allegorical and mythological scenes among the grotesques.
Over the centuries the villa often changed hands. From 1615 to 1748 it belonged to the Molin. In 1818 it passed to Giuseppe Monti, then to the Berti, the Emo and the Bragadin. Since 1970 it has belonged to the Avezzù Pignatelli di Montecalvo, and it is still a private home today.
The banquet of 11 November
On 11 November 1818, at “casa Molin”, a banquet of Carbonari took place. This was the secret society that dreamed of liberty and a constitution for an Italy under Austrian rule.
The Austrian police uncovered the network. Trials and sentences followed. Among the figures at the heart of the affair was Cecilia Monti, to whom a 2018 conference, marking the bicentenary, devoted ample attention.
The memory of the “martyrs of 1821” lives on today in the village square, in the Monument to the Carbonari. It was designed by Andrea Provini and carved by Grazioso Spazzi. It was unveiled on 16 June 1867. According to the Regione Veneto, it was the first monument raised in Italy after the liberation from Austrian rule in 1866.
Between the villa and the square there are only a few steps. They are the same steps that, two centuries ago, linked a banquet to a dream that would cost dearly.
