A Venetian residence in the Trevisan countryside, where light, silence and proportion have preserved an almost unchanged balance through six centuries.
The story of the property reaches back to the sixteenth century, when the Trevisan — an ancient Venetian patrician family — consolidated at Vascon a vast landed estate and a first manorial residence: the original nucleus on which the present villa would rise. The house's legacy of governance, land and authority marks the beginning of the villa's story.
In 1644 Marietta Trevisan, sole heir of the principal branch, married Zuanne Loredan (1610–1699), bringing him the Vascon properties as dowry. The estate passed thus to the Loredan branch known as «di San Vio»: one of the most prestigious houses of the Republic, linked to three doges and destined to give the villa its name.
The Loredan gave Venice three doges: Leonardo Loredan (1501–1521), the doge of the Venetian Renaissance celebrated in Giovanni Bellini's portrait; Pietro Loredan (1567–1570), a figure of political balance in the years of the Cyprus war; and Francesco Loredan (1752–1762), the doge of the Serenissima's final splendour. The villa carries this legacy in its name.
The decisive moment for the villa comes with Cavaliere Antonio Loredan (1666–1748), protagonist of the victorious defence of Corfu against the Ottoman siege of summer 1716 and a leading figure of Venetian public life, decorated as Knight of Saint Mark. It is he who transforms the residence into a dwelling of the highest representational rank — harmonious, scenographic, designed to host illustrious guests and to reflect the family's prestige. A passionate patron of music, he is almost certainly the commissioner of Antonio Vivaldi's Juditha Triumphans, the sacro-military oratorio composed to celebrate the Venetian victory over the Turks.
In the wake of the knighthood, Antonio and his brother Alvise undertook a radical re-imagining of the complex, from traditional agricultural residence to dwelling of the highest representational rank. The plan was made rigorously symmetrical: the manor was flanked by two porticoed, fully rusticated barchesse aligned on the same façade line. The most striking invention was the opening of the front of the great hall into a tetrastyle Ionic loggia, surmounted by a strictly classical Palladian pediment — a scenographic connection between garden and salone, of an almost neoclassical avant-la-lettre flavour.
The heart of the villa is the great double-height salone, frescoed around 1720 by Girolamo Brusaferro, Niccolò Bambini and Emilian perspective masters. The cycle, dedicated to the Aeneid and Roman history, is considered one of the most striking Baroque examples in the Veneto. The verticality of the space, the light and the richness of the scenes create an environment of rare intensity, completed by the two wrought-iron «orchestra» balconies at either end that made it also a refined musical auditorium.
Consecrated on 24 October 1719 by the bishop of Treviso Fortunato Morosini, the oratory has a circular plan with a triple-apsed presbytery — a unicum in the early-eighteenth-century sacred architecture of the Veneto. Its Loretan dedication echoes the public vow made by the Serenissima to the Virgin during the siege of Corfu. Its position, slightly detached from the villa, creates a harmonious dialogue between spirituality, landscape and architecture.
In the nineteenth century the villa passes into the patrimony of the Valier, another Venetian patrician family famed for refined taste and artistic patronage. The presence of the Valier guarantees continuity, care and an evolution that respects the original identity of the residence.
In the post-war years the villa is acquired by the Perocco di Meduna family, who undertake a major conservation restoration. Their intervention returns the complex to its architectural and landscape integrity, preserving the Venetian spirit of the residence and its calling to beauty, proportion and discretion.
