The name of the village's most famous villa arrived with a marriage. The territory belonged to Vicenza until 1268 and there was a castle here, first of the Dente, then of the Belludi, then of the Da Carrara; when Jacopo da Carrara left the Piazzola estates to his daughter Maria, and Maria in 1413 married the Venetian nobleman Nicolò Contarini, the place took on the surname that the villa would bear. Of the castle something perhaps remains in the plinth on which the central body rises, which is probably a design by Andrea Palladio; the side wings were added in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
In the nineteenth century the villa was a ruin, and the family who put it back on its feet were the Camerini. Paolo Camerini, a student of agrarian questions and a pioneer of land reclamation, a left-wing deputy from 1900 to 1913, did a great deal more besides: he built factories and houses for the workers, and within a few years Piazzola went from being a farming village to one of the most industrialised centres in the Veneto. In 1902 he was made cavaliere del lavoro, in 1925 he was created duke, and in the palace he assembled a library of about forty thousand volumes, with rare sixteenth-century editions. Of the industry of those days the area of the former jute mill remains; on the last Sunday of every month the square in front of the villa hosts one of the largest antiques markets in Italy.
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📅 Every year, on 8 September; in July the Piazzola Live Festival was held, now the Hydrogen Festival
Piazzola sul Brenta celebrates the Nativity of the Virgin Mary on 8 September. In July, the Piazzola Live Festival was held, later renamed the Hydrogen Festival, which in 2013 brought artists such as Carlos Santana and Mark Knopfler to the stage of the Anfiteatro Camerini.
Straight-line distances from the town centre. Tap a point to open its page.
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Piazzola sul Brenta, but an easy day trip away.
