The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

train ride from Monsélice (9 daily). Sporadic buses run up into the hills from
here and the chief tourist office of the Colli Euganei, the Pro Loco Sud-Est,
is at Piazza Maggiore 9 (Mon–Sat 9am–12.30pm; t0429.3635); there’s
also a local council tourist office at Via Negri 9 (May–Oct 9am–12.30pm &
2.30–4pm).
From the train station a road runs straight to the central Piazza Maggiore,
passing the blank-faced Basilica di Santa Maria delle Grazie (with a fourteenth-century
Byzantine Madonna) and the Romanesque brick church of San
Martino. The nearest thing to an alluring building in the piazza itself is the
tatty thirteenth-century home of the Società Gabinetto di Lettura, a cultural
organization and archive.
Turning to the right out of the piazza you come face to face with the walls of
the ruined Castello dei Carraresi; founded by the Este dynasty and rebuilt by
the Da Carrara family in 1340, the fortress is now surrounded by the attractive
Giardini del Castello (summer 8am–7pm; winter 9am–5pm; free). Material
salvaged from the walls was used in the construction of the sixteenth-century
palace that now houses the Museo Nazionale Atestino, Via G. Negri 9c
(daily 9am–8pm; e2).
Este claims to be the oldest town in the Veneto, and the region’s outstanding
collection of pre-Roman artefacts is installed on the museum’s first floor
(burial finds, Bronze Age tools and Iron Age pots), while much of the ground
floor is given over to Roman remains. (Roman sites are still being excavated in
the western part of the town.) The room devoted to medieval pieces includes
a Madonna and Child by Cima da Conegliano that was once stolen from the
church of Santa Maria della Consolazione and is now here for safe keeping.
There’s also a display of local pottery, a craft that Este has been famous for
since before the Renaissance, and some curious tombstones from the fifth
century BC which preserve the alphabet of the ancient language known as
Venetico. The castle walls now enclose public gardens – useful on hot summer
afternoons when everything is closed.
The privately owned Villa de Kunkler, round the back of the castle, was
Byron’s residence in 1817–18, a stay commemorated by a plaque on the villa’s
wall. The house actually played a greater part in Shelley’s life than Byron’s
– his daughter Clara fell ill while staying here, and died as a result of being
carried by her father on an overnight gallop to see a doctor in Venice. When
the Shelleys returned here a few days later, Percy wrote his poem of mourning
for past splendour, Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills.
Leading out of the Piazza Maggiore away from the castle, Via Matteotti
passes under the Porta Vecchia, a restrained Baroque clock tower built on
the site of a much earlier defensive tower. Over the river there’s Santa Maria
della Consolazione, a homely church containing nothing of special interest
since its Cima painting went to the museum. Turn right instead of going
through the tower and you come to the dull sixteenth-century church of
San Francesco, beyond which (in the Quartiere Augusteo) is the main Roman
archeological site in Este. Turn right down Via Garibaldi for the Duomo
(daily 10am–noon & 4–6pm), which was rebuilt between 1690 and 1708 after
an earthquake; the oval plan of its Baroque interior anticipated the design of
the Pietà in Venice by several decades. The only painting of note is the huge
altarpiece of St Thecla Calling on God for the Cessation of the Plague, an unusually
bleak picture by Giambattista Tiepolo, which you’ll need the sacristan to
illuminate for you; the landscape in the background is a fairly accurate view
of Este and the Colli Euganei.
Padua and the southern veneto
| Este
317