History

The Pisani family acquired the Stra property in the 17th century and built a smaller villa there; the present building was commissioned by Alvise Pisani around 1721, when the family was at the peak of its political and financial power. The architectural programme was ambitious: a 114-room main building with a double external staircase and a projecting ionic portico — entirely unlike the relatively restrained villas of Palladio — and an enormous formal park that included the hedge maze designed by Girolamo Frigimelica, a hippodrome for horse racing, a botanical garden, and a canal system. The ballroom fresco cycle by Giambattista Tiepolo, commissioned in 1760 when Alvise’s successor was trying to preserve Venetian influence during the War of Austrian Succession, was one of the last great Venetian aristocratic commissions before the Republic fell to Napoleon in 1797.

Napoleon visited Stra in 1807 and was so struck by the villa that he purchased it from the bankrupt Pisani heirs for 9,000 Napoleondors. It became an imperial stopover on the road between Paris and Venice and received all the emperors of the Napoleonic era. The Beauharnais viceroys renovated the interiors and added the empire-style furniture; the Savoy family used it as a summer residence throughout the 19th century. In 1869, King Vittorio Emanuele II installed the young Crown Prince Umberto here with his wife Margherita of Savoy; legend holds that Umberto as a child became lost in the maze and had to be rescued. The villa was transferred to the state in 1882 and has been a museum since 1906.