travelswithalice

Villa Pisani

One of the surprising things about this house was, despite charging admission fees and having a souvenir shop at the gate, there was nothing businesslike about the whole business of being open to the public. The young man who opened the gate to us recited the rules of engagement offhandedly, like he didn’t care if we obeyed them or not. He then hurried off to parts unknown, leaving the gate once again unattended. The part of the house off-limits to visitors was indicated by a pot of flowers standing rather innocently on the first step of the narrow staircase leading up to the upper level where the owners lived.

As the front door of the house, which was originally designed to face the river, now faced a stone wall, the grand three-arched loggia with the rusticated pillars now served as the back porch. Well, sort of a back porch.  If you discounted the fact that the pillars rose to a height equivalent to about three storeys by today’s building standards. The back of the building, which in this case really did look like the back of the building, therefore now served as the front entrance, accessed by a wide stone staircase.

Despite its size- the ceiling soared to a height of about thirty feet in the sala- Villa Pisani did not have the overwhelming hugeness of a palace or even a stately home. It must all have to do with Palladio’s vaunted classical proportions. Indeed the house was grand but it did feel like somebody’s home.