Overview
The villa in Riscossa is visited mainly for the overall Rococo charm of the interiors and furnishings, emphasised by striking frescoes that are thought to be the work of two artists who were highly sought-after in Venetian circles at the end of the 18th century: Giuseppe Angeli, a pupil of Giambattista Piazzetta, and Gerolamo Mengozzi Colonna, a favourite collaborator of Tiepolo. The main hall illustrates the Glory of the Widmann family in pictures embellished with frames and stucco work. The architecture is also remarkable, perhaps designed by Andrea Tirali, in a complex that, in addition to the main building with its own garden, includes the adjacent courtyard, a barchessa (outhouse), a small church and the vast Parco (park) to the north. Almost opposite the villa, you can see on the opposite bank of the Naviglio di Brenta the surviving barchesse of the 16th-century Villa Valmarana, the main body of which was demolished in the early 1900s to escape the tax on luxury housing. Here, however, there is no lack of 18th-century frescoes either.
