Located in the small village of Pontecasale, a hamlet of Candiana, it is the only example of a country building designed by Jacopo Sansovino. The Villa is surrounded by an imposing city wall that collects inside the building, the stables and the land: a large gate on the main road leads to an avenue of statues that accompanies the visitor up the staircase leading to the entrance of the Villa . The façade has a double loggia and on the back there is a splendid porticoed courtyard, traditional in the typical architecture of the Bassa: on the side it is possible to admire long barchesse, the park and a small chapel containing stuccoes designed by Sansovino himself.
Villa Garzoni Michiel History
The Garzoni family owned Candiana as early as the mid-fifteenth century of a fief of over 1500 fields, of which a third consisted of low and marshy lands. In 1588 the estate passed testamentary to the Michiels; so it was Donà dalle Rose, who sold it in 1930.
The villa was built for Luigi Garzoni, great reclaimer of the lower province of Padua, by Jacopo Sansovino around the middle of the sixteenth century. The complex has a solemn and massive appearance, with a large five-arched atrium in the center of the façade divided by semi-columns of Doric order, surmounted by a loggia with the same number of arches and semi-columns of the Ionic order; everything is reminiscent of the Piazzetta San Marco Library in Venice, a masterpiece of the architect's meditative.
The whole appears very clear and simple, completely devoid of sculptures or other decorations, resulting in one of the most harmonious creations of Sansovino, as Vasari also writes in his "Lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects". A hanging courtyard, all surrounded by statues, has a scenic well in the middle where the rainwater from the roofs and the terrace is conveyed, which presents the undulating floor for this purpose; elegant are also two fireplaces with beautiful caryatids, also these works by Sansovino.
Long barchesse of 34 arches enclose the courtyard on two sides, while a 60-field field surrounding the villa is surrounded by a crenellated wall.