It is known as the “queen of the Venetian villas.” and indeed, Villa Pisani in Stra is a significant, elegant, majestic presence; it is impossible not to notice it as one travels along Veneto Regional Road 11, or the long road that leads from the center of Venice, from Piazzale Roma, to the gates of Padua, skirting the Brenta Canal, along which stand several of the villas that in ancient times the Venetian patriciate had erected in these pleasant countryside as vacation spots away from the city chaos of Venice.

The largest is Villa Pisani, whose origins date back to the 18th century, when the Pisani di Santo Stefano, one of the richest families of the Venetian nobility Venetian, reached their apogee, even managing to express a doge, Alvise Pisani, who was first Venetian ambassador to Louis XIV’s France, after which he ascended to the doge’s throne in 1735, when Villa Pisani was under construction.