During the 19th century, the sumptuous garden of a powerful Doge family was turned into a vast landscaped park: the grandeur and magnificence of the past reflects in the vastness of a once-private property, now managed by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region, open to the public and home to a variety of events.
Delimited by a high mixtilinear wall, the garden that the prominent Manin family from Venice created for themselves as a way of complementing their majestic residence, today displays varied late-romantic layout. The earliest garden plan, attributed to a French architect of the School of Le Nôtre, dates back to the second decade of the 18th century: the layout was inspired by the Gardens of Versailles and by those of Villa Pisani in Stra, the most splendid Doge residence in the Veneto Region. Over the course of the 18th century, the northern part, delimited by Rococo-style mixtilinear walls, saw various additions including complex hydraulic water features and a considerable statue collection. Visited by illustrious personalities (Maria Amalia of Saxony, Carlo Goldoni, etc.) and backdrop to important political events such as the appointment of Lodovico IV as Doge (1789) and the French occupations (in 1797 the villa became Napoleon’s headquarters in Friuli), Villa Manin’s garden suffered a period of considerable deterioration during the 19th century: in the early 1800s it underwent interventions of formal simplification designed by Giannantonio Selva (the architect responsible for Teatro La Fenice in Venice), while in the 19th century Friulian engineer Pietro Quaglia redesigned the park according to the then-predominating romantic-patriotic trends: the result was the landscape layout still in place today, despite the loss of some of its features. In the 1960s the complex, which had by then became public property, was subject to a greening intervention: numerous plant species were planted, not always harmonising with the pre-existing vegetation. The large tree-lined avenue to the north, set outside the enclosure, is a symbolic representation of the once great power of the Manin family. The same sense of grandeur and influence, attested by historical records and literary sources, also translates in the 18-hectare green area, the earliest example of historical garden in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region.
Highlights
The exedras
In Passariano, a small town in central Friuli, visitors are usually taken aback by this impressive Baroque-style forecourt, whose curvilinear shape welcomes visitors into one of the most imposing villas of the Veneto Region. The structure, conceived in the 18th century by architect Domenico Rossi, is inspired by Bernini’s colonnade of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Infused with Venetian luminism this space is a prelude to the splendours of the residence and to the “delights” of the garden behind it.
The frescoes
Almost no trace of the villa’s original sumptuous decorative apparatus remains today, but its past grandeur is evoked in a room leading to the park by an elaborate early-18th-century Rococo fresco decoration by Parisian painter Louis Dorigny: a glorious Triumph of Spring, in the presence of the allegories of Love, Glory, Wealth and Abundance celebrating the illustrious Manin art patrons and ideally introducing visitors to the lush garden that lies beyond.
The sculptures
Adorned with imposing vases and 18th-century garden statuary, the main pathways of the Villa Manin park are named after the most representative and rare plant species growing in it. The elegant Vicenza stone statues are made by specialised workshops of the Veneto Region, one of them being the prestigious Bonazza family and other excellent craftsmen-artists whose work can be admired in many other complexes of the Veneto area.
The hillocks
At the northern end of the park, there are four artificial hillocks adorned with groups of statues representing mythological subjects (Mount Parnassus, The Rape of Proserpina, The Division of the World, Apollo and the Python). These sculptures are all that is left of the original 18th-century garden statuary, today mostly lost. Conceived by Roman scenographer Giuseppe Valeriani, these mythological groups evoke the virtues of noble art patrons and their role as promoters of the arts and the territory.
The small belvedere temple
In the western area of the park, not far from the Doge’s main abode, on an artificial hillock (which once contained the old ice-house) is an Ionic monopteros pavilion. Probably designed by architect Giannantonio Selva, it testifies to the early 19th-century taste shift towards Neoclassicism.