The Villa and Park Miari de Cumani complex, a Villa-Castle with an attached 19th-century Romantic Park, is located to the south of the Province of Padua and the Euganean Hills, immersed in a vast agricultural panorama.
The neo-Gothic and Venetian style Villa-Castle has medieval origins: the first written testimony from the 14th century tells of a tower house, the original settlement of the Cumani family, who still inhabit the villa, having arrived at the estate in the second half of the 13th century. Over the centuries, the villa has transformed from a large agricultural residence to a noble and bourgeois villa: in the 1970s, Antonia Miari de Cumani decided to make ten rooms of the villa accessible, which house numerous relics and memories of the families and personalities who have lived on the estate. Room by room, one discovers the most authentic local history through writer ancestors, war heroes, influential politicians, and astute entrepreneurs, such as Giacomo Miari de Cumani, the first automobile entrepreneur in Italy.
The Park, which covers an area of eight hectares, dates back to 1856, when Osvaldo Torquato Paoletti, a landscape architect from the Jappelli school, was commissioned by Count Felice Miari to design a romantic style park and an English garden, replacing the pre-existing Brolo. Inspired by a medieval legend recounting the abduction of Elena Fontana by the Witch Gilda of the Desert set in 1180, Paoletti created the Miari de Cumani Park. The Park, with its multiple and evocative natural settings amplified or softened by the light, shadows, or weather conditions of the day, is capable of evoking truly extraordinary emotions in the visitor. Inside, immersed in nature, there are also particular architectural structures including a Nymphaeum, a neoclassical temple dedicated to Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour, and a Swiss Cottage. Also present are rare specimens of Taxodium distichum, Fagus sylvatica, and Black Austrian Pine, as well as centuries-old trees.
