The Michelangelo Da Vinci restaurant – 360°

At a glance

Type

Restaurant and dance hall — closed

Where

Villamarzana, Province of Rovigo, Veneto, Italy

Coordinates

45.0206639° N, 11.6625828° E

Opened

2000

Closed

2014

Built from

A Douglas DC-6 and a Tupolev Tu-134A, joined by a control tower

Overview

The place is closed. Michelangelo da Vinci stood in the countryside of the Polesine at Villamarzana, in the Province of Rovigo, in the Veneto. It was made of two aircraft — a Douglas DC-6 and a Tupolev Tu-134A — joined by a control tower and turned into a place to eat and dance, with two further rooms full of frescoes and statues.

The name put together the two great names of Italian art, Leonardo and Michelangelo, for a place its owner meant to be unlike any other.

History

The idea belonged to Gigi Stecca. He had worked for ten years running two old people’s homes, and remembered the residents who, seeing an aeroplane overhead, told him they would have liked to go up in one: the restaurant was to be a way of letting the young and the old on board.

Michelangelo da Vinci opened in 2000. Barely three months later the comune served notice of a building offence with a fine of one billion, 252 million and 480 thousand lire. A negotiation followed and the structures were regularised through a recovery plan, but the fine remained, despite the owning company’s appeal for the payment to be suspended. The company closed in 2014, and with it the aircraft and every room of the restaurant.

Stecca is also credited with an invention of his own: a glass with internal fluting that, when the beer is poured correctly, lessens its alcoholic effect without losing the freshness and, he claimed, improving the taste.

What you see

The site is now visited chiefly by urban explorers. The interiors of the two aircraft and of the other rooms survive; in summer the restaurant had used the garden under the wings, and turned into a disco pub on Saturday nights and live music with group dancing on Sundays.

Two further rooms stood on the site, a pub-pizzeria and a discotheque, called Sebastian Pub and Il Convento.

Practical information

• Address: Via Frattesina 8, 45030 Villamarzana (RO), Veneto.
• The place is closed and is private property. It is not open to visitors, and the structures are unmaintained.

Sources

• Cultural Heritage Online historical archive — original Italian entry (beniculturalionline.it), transposed and corrected 2026.
• Urban-exploration report and photographs, scattoperscatto.it, as cited in the archive entry.