Villa Manin is named after the last doge of Venice and is an 18th-century urban villa, located on the bend of the Bisatto canal, near the historic Ponte delle Grazie. It is charming for its garden and representative avenue, as well as its position along the canal. It is privately owned, with numerous changes of ownership, even recently.
In medieval times, there was a fortress with a tower and battlements on the site of the villa, serving as external protection for the city gate of San Martino, now known as Ponte delle Grazie.
In the 18th century, the peak and decline of Venetian presence in Veneto, Este appeared surrounded by estates of the lagoon nobility with villas, gardens, and orchards, favored by navigable access from Venice, along the Bisatto. The most prestigious villas, like that of the Manins, have a direct landing from the property to the water.
By the end of the 1700s, the villa appeared in its current form with decorative pinnacles on the roof, the adjoining buildings aligned to the east, the barchessa near the canal, and the low wall towards Via Canevedo, enclosing a large plot up to the Bisatto Canal, divided between the orchard and the outbuildings, all without trees.
Originally, the villa was built for the Basadonna family, later passed to the Morosini and then to the Manins: Ludovico Manin, the last doge of Venice, owned it in 1797.
The end of the Venetian Republic brought changes in the management of the territory: for example, the canals became completely public, with their banks accessible along external paths to the properties. Villa Manin entered the 19th century detached from the Bisatto canal, fragmented in relation to its outbuildings: ready to become an urban villa connected to the city across the bridge.
The current situation, little modified in the last 50 years regarding the buildings, is flourishing for the garden area: the plants overshadow the buildings, surpassing them in height, the avenue is perfect, and even in the reduced outbuildings around, the greenery nicely filters the complex from the external paths.
The architecture follows the canons of the 15th and 16th-century Venetian villas, with some decorative additions that highlight the attention of the Venetian patricians who succeeded each other in the ownership.
The design of the villa is completely integrated with that of the landscaping of the entrance area: a garden that enhances the building as a privileged urban palace, with no concessions to production activities, which are practically absent.
In a beautiful 19th-century fence, characteristic of the urban villa, the main entrance gate captures attention, with large marbles of female figures contrasting against the green-black of the trees and the double row of the garden. These two statues were paired with two others positioned on the pillars of another entrance. The 18th-century statues represented the continents then known: Europe and Asia on the pillars of Via Principe Amedeo, Africa and America on those of Via Borgofuro.
