Villa Marcello: Façade

At the beginning of the sixteenth century, a hunting lodge was built in the marshland around Levada by the Marcello family, members of the Venetian nobility. Around 1550 this structure was replaced with the three-story villa that makes up the central corpus of the present-day complex. The side wings were added later. In the seventeenth century the villa changed ownership several times, finally in 1725 it passed into the hands of the Maruzzi, an extremely wealthy banking family of Greek origin. They were responsible for the construction of the new, Palladian-style fa�ade, designed by Francesco Maria Preti, which was superimposed over the original fa�ade and features a series of engaged Ionic columns that support a triangular tympanum surmounted by statues.

The ballroom on the second floor was frescoed by Giovanni Battista Crosato.