When was the last time you decided on a well-thought-out tour of Veneto villas? Exactly. The garden mansions of Venetian patricians built at the height of the Republic’s influence in its deep hinterland from the mid-1500’s on, designed by the likes of Andrea Palladio and Vincenzo Scamozzi, make for a pretty specific destination and, on paper, a relaxing trip – a villa, like any home, is about comfort and leisure, and unlike a typical home, about enviable harmony between the mansion’s palatial proportions and classical detail, and between that and the surrounding gardens and the countryside. Nonetheless, as relaxing as it may be, it is a trip that is diffuse, elusive, and difficult to execute. Exploration of this class of historical monument is not for a thoughtless, overworked R&R-seeking Western tourist or, at best, one looking for some prepackaged, easily digestible highlights. It also does not lend itself to a hired guide, at least not easily: Veneto has almost 3,500 registered period villas, ten percent of them easily worth a look, and at least a hundred of historical and artistic value. To yield significant results, such exploration – self guided or not – will be a challenge, due to a low density of villas, the paucity of information on real time status and access, the difficulty of screening in advance, and numerous logistical complications.
A purposeful ten day trip with a dedicated itinerary would do – but who has ten days to spare on touring the countryside of some off-the-beaten-path province in search of half-forgotten villas that no longer show up in mainstream guides? And how would one put such an itinerary together – in a way that minimizes the chance of finding a front gate closed and that avoids painful disappointment over gas, food, lodging, or seasonal schedule changes – even if real disappointment with Belpaese may be hard to come by? And more importantly, why? Why bother creating this obstacle to then then overcome it, given all the competing options this amazing country offers?
Serious time and project management skills, backed by spreadsheets and pivot tables, would be required to initiate, track, and follow through on bookings and individual appointment confirmations while navigating around binding constraints of opening hours, local trains, car rental agencies, and gas stations. And what if some turn out to be unattended on Sundays and only equipped to take certain types of credit cards that are still out of reach for the general American public? Seems too risky and time consuming.
My solution? Leave the villa sightseeing for when you are ready to relocate to – or retire in – this beautiful country. Art villa topology is too diffuse, with country estates too ambitiously spread out over a large area with no easy access. In the meantime, look to enlist the help of some other catalyst to capture the villa theme – another attraction that could boost the density of the villas enough to turn the planned itinerary into an actionable trip. One such catalyst is clearly wine, and this is how you do Veneto Villas. Of the 3,500 properties you will capture no more than half a dozen, and possibly fewer, but the experience will be enhanced. The Veneto Villa country, if it were mapped, would struggle to fit its historic estates into a single string of contiguous paesi, and even a short list of the most desirable spots would spill over the boundaries of reasonable proximity. The mainland area immediately across Venice and around Treviso has at least twenty notable monumental properties, and the countryside around Vicenza and Padua at least two dozen, older and of greater historic value. A number of villas also extend down to Rovigo and up to Belluno, outside the boundaries of the Veneto province.
Now that we have settled on the catalyst, I would overlay another map as a filter – that of local wine trails – on top of this incongruent and incoherent map of isolated villas. This wine overlay can be physical or mental, but must be curated to string together a number of distinguished but barely visited wineries, historic cellars, local tasting rooms, and scenic vineyards. The villas, built from the 15th to 18th centuries for Venetian aristocracy and urban patricians of Verona, Vicenza, Padova are occupied today by prominent wine producing families of Veneto, their new aristocratic owners. The wine trail filter will make the focus area smaller, much smaller, enriching its content with added experiences, and will make the points of interest more easily addressable – the glue that holds the select few historic villas of interest together. And it doesn’t hurt at all that Veneto happens to have some of the finest and most complex wines, most diverse grape varieties, most nuanced production processes, and most diverse populations of winemakers and opinions.
Wine in a great producing region is usually accompanied by great scenery, quaint setting with rustic character, and deep gastronomic traditions specific to locally sourced grapes where the spotlight is typically on wine infused recipes, cheeses and honey. Veneto is ground zero for things artisanal that remain unaffected by hype and barely exported. To me, it is Northern Italy’s most local province. The artisanal character fits with the overall theme of small forms – from exceptional architecture to roadside towns, eateries, and wine estates, everything tends here to be delivered on a smaller scale, keeping the itinerary themes of wine and villa in harmony. If I were into drone photography, and perhaps I should consider it, I would certainly aim my equipment towards the Valpolicella wine country, as the eye-level view of the garden villa structures simply does not do them justice. How are you supposed to appreciate the genius of spatial planning, the interplay of tile roofs covered covering the main pavilion and the wings, and the way this agrees with the surrounding vineyards?
The wine villas in Veneto will take your call, happy to set up an appointment, usually for later that morning or, at the latest, for the following day. Aware of their unique place in the nexus of premium wines and the broader legacy of Italian art and history, the villa personnel will greet you with a personal one-on-one tour – of the villa’s common areas, grounds, park, and vineyards, planted in the traditional Pergola Veronese fashion or the yield-maximizing French Guyot style – and of course, of the cellar. The tour guide, employed by the wine family, will be trained in hospitality and and marketing, well-versed in the nuances of the history of the estate and the producing area, and also responsible for the tastings. They will be an excellent source on the latest competitive dynamics between the region’s wine families, ready to engage in Q&A. Enjoy – at risk is only your next destination or appointment so be sure to reserve the estate of interest for a late afternoon, when neither party is in a rush.
The wine map will determine the itinerary and filter out a number of villa destinations, some of which historic and definitely worth a visit, but they will have to wait some more – after all they have already waited several centuries. What’s important is that the few historic estates and former aristocratic mansions that you manage to capture on the wine country tour will be truly rewarding, enjoyable, and memorable. Viewing empty villas, even of museum quality, is much less interesting than touring the art villa that also functions as a winery, tasting room, wine cellar and, sometimes, as a bed and breakfast. Without the wine, these mansions are, at best, for private use only and out of reach for the public and, at worst, abandoned. With the added dimension of wine, centuries-old architectural interiors of the historic mansion become inhabited – objects otherwise inanimate, outfitted with elegant but indifferent moldings, and once colorful but since faded frescos, today at best for private use only and out of reach for the public, at worst abandoned – come alive, acquire a purpose, a new dimension. 
The Veneto villa appeared before the nation state came into existence as a political entity, back when Italian Queens reigned in France, before the latter was unified. The Renaissance villas of the Venetian hinterland were designed by some of the top names in the history of fine and applied arts – the oldest by Andrea Palladio, Vincenzo Scamozzi, Giulio Romano, and Michele Sanmicheli. These virtuosos of the Venetian hinterland came right after Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, Bandinelli, Michelangelo – the Florentine giants of Early Renaissance – but still preceded Pietro da Cortona, Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini – the founders of Roman Baroque. They also predated much of the art routinely admired outside of Italy, Flanders being one notable exception. Seminal figures of the Veneto villas were near contemporaries of Giacomo della Porta, Benvenuto Cellini, Georgio Vasari – not to compare a country residence built for leisure (recall that many of the best are not even on this wine trail) with the finest works commissioned by the popes and royalty – and therefore smack in the middle of Late Renaissance or Mannerism.
If you thought Gesamtkunstwerk was an obscure, rhetorical, unnecessarily ,grandiloquent and exclusive word, of uncertain meaning, think again: the winery estates of Veneto will prove your wrong. The Veneto villa as a genre has fetched a high praise from critics and historians for being the true reflections of classical humanistic spirit. A spirit of those times when multiple art forms – the military engineering, the architecture of the exterior, the frescoes of the interior, the landscape design of the surrounding formal gardens and English parks, the plastic arts of monumental sculpture and outdoor statues – not only coexisted in perfect harmony in a single masterpiece but were frequently the work of genius of a single author, a Renaissance man. It would take different talents, distinct endeavors, and separate artistic careers to produce an analogous work of art today. This harmony was later given a more concise term: ‘total work of art.’ More concisely still, ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ – a single word only 15 letters in length, it is still superior to the pretentious English mouthful. Every once in a while the Germans just nail it. From time to time, we all see it – even call it – when the time is right, when our inspired mind gets exposed to an unusually well-orchestrated artistic work of masterful coordination. And that was just the visual aspect of things, before the land around the villa turned to the deliberate cultivation of the grape. Add the planting of the vines, informed by an intensive study of the terroir, the minerals, and the soil, and by the obsession with provenance this industry has taken to the extreme. Then add the continued perfection of the harvest, the centuries of discovery – by trial and error, down to a science, of taking the risks and beating the odds – in an all-out effort of perfecting the making of the wine, grape to table. The traditional definition of Gesamtkunstwerk lives in three dimensions only and is simply ill-equipped to pick up the effect that the cultivation of a premium wine has on this preexisting harmony of the art forms. 
Wine ennobles the Venetian villa, and certainly elevates the agriculture of the surrounding countryside – no longer all rusty machinery and faint smell of manure – to the rarefied heights of viticulture and oenology where the air is simply thinner. Wine at these properties turns a passive art repository – doubtfully of interest to jaded visitors – to an active celebration. A celebration of time, tradition, patience, and outrageously elitist, almost intentionally overhyped claims to the nuances of flavor and bouquet. A celebration of everything some of us find so invigorating about winemaking, from the smell of overly ripe grapes and the oak of the wine cellar to the look of shiny instrumentation and controls in the back, to the thrill of discovering a new grape – a new twist on the familiar blend – to the sound of wine swirling into a decanter and of clinking crystal glassware at the tasting room table in the front. A great experience at a historic winery doesn’t need to be narrowly about wine: it opens up new culinary horizons, whether literally in a sauce or figuratively in a paring, and expands the possibilities in the kitchen, tempting the inspired visitor with the prospect of discovery – a new osteria in the area where a heretofore unseen label, vintage or grape can be put to the test and affirmed in the setting of a delicious, timely, well-deserved homemade meal.
