Villa Manin

Villa Manin at Passariano is a Venetian villa located in Passariano of Codroipo, province of Udine, northern Italy.

It was the residence of the last Doge of Venice, Ludovico Manin. Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine de Beauharnais lived there for about two months in 1797. Here were conducted many interviews for the signing of the treaty between France and Austria known as the Treaty of Campoformio (17 October 1797).

The villa Manin was restored in the 1960s. It hosts a museum and since 2004 to 2008 was a contemporary art center and hosted major international exhibitions.

It is a monumental architectural complex built in the sixteenth century at the behest of the noble Friulian Antonio Manin who, at the loss of the dominion of the seas, focused on the resources offered by the mainland, setting up a farm and putting a manor house at his center.

The Manin family, documented in Florence since 1000, had arrived in Friuli (Aquileia and Cividale) as a result of the struggles between the Guelphs and Ghibellines and held that role and the politics in mainland of Venice which will be fully developed in the sixteenth century, a time when Antonio Manin came into possession of the gastaldato of Sedegliano and settled in Passariano.

The first factory of the villa is dated between 1650 and 1660.

In the following years, the grandchildren Ludovico Manin I and Francesco IV took up the project, perhaps aided by the architect Giuseppe Benone. The original appearance of the seventeenth-century villa was radically different from the current one, due to the transformations and enlargements in eighteenth century by Ludovico II and Ludovico III (called Alvise), made first by the Venetian architect Domenico Rossi (who in 1707 designed the square plaza and, after 1718, perhaps realizes the current monumental exedra), and then by Giovanni Ziborghi, who between 1730 and 1740 did raise the barchesse (barn wings). The raising of the noble central core, built with the consulting of Giorgio Massari, was realized after 1745. The large garden (over 17 acres) in the back appears to be due to the will of the "master of the house" Ziborghi.

...
Wikipedia