Villa Pisani Historical Timeline

Origins

The Pisani were among the wealthiest Venetian families, and the Brenta -- navigable from the lagoon -- was where such families built when they wanted land without leaving Venice's orbit.

Turning points

Construction ran from 1721. Girolamo Frigimelica laid out the park, the stables and the exedra; Francesco Maria Preti designed the main block and finished it in 1756.

Influential people

Alvise Pisani was elected Doge in 1735, midway through the building, and the villa was recalibrated as a statement of that. The 114 rooms match his number in the succession.

Cultural evolution

Napoleon bought it in 1807 and passed it to his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais; it later went to the Habsburgs and then to the Italian state.

Present-day significance

In 1934 the villa hosted the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler -- an encounter that went badly enough at the time to be worth recording. It is now a national museum.