Villa Cornaro

Villa Cornaro or Cornèr is a Venetian villa located in Piombino Dese (Padua) designed by Andrea Palladio in 1552. It was included in 1996 in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, together with the other Palladian villas in the Veneto.

The Corner family has been attested in Piombino since 1422, when it is the owner of 310 Treviso fields and various annexed buildings. In 1551, at the death of Girolamo Corner of the branch known as "di San Cassiano" or "della Regina" (he was the grandson of the well-known Caterina Corner), his sons Andrea and Giorgio shared his assets in Piombino, or a holiday complex built between 1539 and 1549: the manor house goes to the first, 7 fields of the "bruolo" to the other, a barchessa and half of the garden.

The construction of the new villa is due to Giorgio but, although he inherits the property in 1551, he will have to wait the following year to come into possession of it, being then engaged in Peschiera on behalf of the Serenissima. The construction site was already fully operational in March 1553, and in April of the following year the building - although incomplete - was habitable, so much so that Palladio was documented "in the evening" with the landlord.

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The latter, on the occasion of the wedding with Elena Contarini, in June of the same year formally took possession of the villa, or rather of his building site: at this date only the central block was made, but not the wings nor the second order of the loggias . In 1569 the activity of workers who still work at the "bruolo" is documented.

Map: Villa Cornaro