Villa Lioy

Many authors attribute the original design to Camillo Boito, brother of the musician Arrigo, a distinguished architect, art critic and academic, who participated with his brother in the Milanese Scapigliatura literary movement. As will be mentioned later it may have been a collaboration with his master Pietro Selvatico. The building is currently composed as follows.

On the ground floor is the basement, where breakfast is served, equipped with a fireplace and a large display of typical local products: from the oil and wines from the Berici hills to the grappa of the ancient Brunello artisan distillery, to the wines of the Euganean hills.

A majestic internal spiral staircase connects the ground floor to the upper floors. The building is also equipped with a convenient lift.

On the first floor there is the main area with an elegantly furnished lounge from which it is possible to access the 40 square-metre veranda where you can enjoy splendid sunsets over the furthest stretches of the Berici hills.

The six spacious rooms, all with private bathrooms, one even with a hydromassage sauna, are located on the second and third floors and offer stunning views all around. To the west, the hills of Montegalda and, in the distance, the foothills of the Vicenza Alps frame the small, ancient convent of San Marco and the Villa Fogazzaro-Roi-Colbacchini; to the north, the foothills of the Treviso Alps. On the eastern side, thanks also to a romantic and spacious terrace, there is a marvellous view of the Gripman-Marcello-Sorlini Castle, while on the southern side there is the lush green landscape of the Bacchiglione river with the Euganean hills in the background.

HISTORY

New studies and research, commissioned by the current owner, have not only shaken the already poor historical information about the villa, but are even able to anticipate the period of its construction.

The earliest information we have concerns the transfer of ownership in 1855, when Count Giovanni Battista Barbaro sold the villa to Carlotta Cabianca Mario, sister of the Vicentine poet and novelist Jacopo Cabianca.

Carlotta had married Antonio Mario in 1830, brother of the patriot and politician Alberto Mario, who kept up close correspondence with Jacopo on political matters and where great mutual esteem was evident. Although the position of the Vicentine poet was close to patriotic and unitary ideals, he maintained moderate tones; his interests were in fact more literary than strictly political in origin, so much, so that in those years he became one of the best-known literati of the Veneto region.

During the First War of Independence, Cabianca, together with other intellectuals and patriots, frequented the home of Mariano Fogazzaro, father of the novelist Antonio. Along with him there were Maffei, Carcano, Fusinato, Zanella, Capponi, Tenca, the young Antonio Fogazzaro and Fedele Lampertico. With the latter, he compiled a summary of the History of Vicenza. It cannot therefore be ruled out that his sister Carlotta's house, our Villa Lioy, witnessed meetings of a literary-political nature, if only because of the kinship between Jacopo and the activist Alberto Mario.

Another prominent figure on the cultural scene in Padua and Vicenza is included in this context. He was Marquis Pietro Selvatico Estense, an Italian architect, historian and art critic. Selvatico was a close friend of the Cabianca family, especially of Jacopo's parents, Lucia Pasetti and Antonio Cabianca, and of his uncle the abbot Pietro Mugna, a man of learning and art historian.

Pietro Selvatico's cultural activity moved above all in the theoretical debate on the arts and architecture; he distinguished himself in the Paduan and Venetian circle for his militancy and international openness at a time of such fundamental importance as the transition from the Austrian state to the establishment of the Italian one. He worked at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice for ten years as a secretary, lecturer in aesthetics and the history of art, and finally as president.

The academic is remembered as a precursor of the Medieval Revival in an anti-classical key and his teachings were put into practice by his students, first and foremost by the aforementioned Camillo Boito. While Selvatico was an admirer of the Romanesque-Byzantine style in the religious sphere, while he preferred streamlined, minimalist and functional forms in the civil one.

Nevertheless, his activity as an architect was rather limited, but his works include a country house at Montegalda, which can be identified as Villa Lioy. The style is very simple and responds to criteria of functionality and comfort, modelled on English cottages.

In a letter of 1865 to the Genoese sculptor Giovanni Battista Cevasco, he defined the architecture as follows: "The style is quite simple and inspired by what the English use today in their small villages. There are no pointed arches, nor pinnacles, nor sharp pediments, all things that in my opinion are suited to the church, and not to private homes, but instead the system that the English use in their so-called Square style is followed, that is, the windows are rectangles, but their mouldings as well as all the cornices are modelled in the Gothic style and therefore create that strong movement of lines and chiaroscuro that invariably emerges from the various geometric combinations of Gothic profiles".

There is another reference to Selvatico's visits to Carlotta's house in Montegalda when, on 23 June 1860, he wrote in the Giornale Agrario Toscano (Tuscan Agricultural Newspaper) about silkworm cultivation "...the mulberry tree full of little bugs begging Mrs Cabianca Mario to keep them aside in her delightful house in Montegalda".

On Carlotta's death (8 February 1891), the house passed to her son Antonio, who died in 1902. It then passed to Carlo Cantele of Padua, and was eventually purchased in 1919 by the noble Lioy family.

The branch of the Lioy family of Ripacandida was a long-standing noble family from Apulia, whose history dates back to the period of the first Crusades. The Vicenza branch was born in 1782 when Felice Lioy, who had joined Freemasonry, left Terlizzi (Bari) because of the anti-Masonic edict of 1775; he arrived in Vicenza and acquired many land properties, especially in Grumolo delle Abbadesse.

The best-known exponent was Paolo Lioy, born in Vicenza in 1834. Although he enrolled in the Faculty of Law in Padua and never graduated, he is remembered as a writer and great naturalist.

Lioy frequented Vicenza's literary salons and during the early part of his life, forged important ties, such as with Antonio Fogazzaro. His studies on the pile-dwelling villages in the Fimon Valleys (Le abitazioni lacustri di Fimon, Venice 1876), translated into English and German, are extremely important. The academic also held public offices: he was a municipal and provincial councillor in his city and, on several occasions, the Superintendent of Studies in Vicenza.

His political involvement was remarkable. In 1870, he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies where he remained until 1888. In 1905, he was appointed Senator of the Kingdom at the same time as his friend and fellow citizen Fedele Lampertico; he died in Vancimuglio in 1911. It is certain that his son Leopoldo and his wife Teresita lived in Villa Lioy.

Subsequently Villa Lioy had various owners until the arrival of the current Dr Marco Faresin who, with tireless foresight, has brought the place back to life thanks to extensive work, aimed above all at restoring the park and its original paths.

The park that extends over the hillside and covers an area of more than 4 “campi Vicentini” (approx. 18,000 m2), is made up of secular tree and shrub species.

Two magnificent specimens of Deodara or Himalayan Cedars located at the east and west ends of the park, seemingly want to delimit a saddle-shaped space, which has been carefully landscaped. The loop trail accompanies the visitor on an undulating path that encircles the property, allowing you to enjoy a pleasurable environment, where different sceneries and landscapes can be distinguished.

While the south side of the park, facing the villa's façade, is regular and orderly with new plantings of olive trees, rows of mulberry trees and flowering slopes, the rear part appears to be wilder. The effect is certainly in keeping with an intended design of a romantic English-style park, perhaps also designed by Selvatico, in which nature and asymmetry are the undisputed protagonists. The play of chiaroscuro filtering through the branches of the oak, yew, hackberry, pine and ash trees makes the walk fascinating and at times mysterious.