The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

The best restaurant in town is the Ca’ Derton, on Piazza G. D’Annunzio
(t0423.529.648; closed Sun eve & Mon), which has an excellent menu at around
e35 for two courses; booking is essential. You can sample the same superb cooking
at around half the price in the more informal A Enoteca di Nino e Antonietta next
door, where the kitchen closes at 10pm but the bar continues to serve fine wines
until 1am. The more basic Cornaro, just off Piazza Garibaldi in Via Regina Cornaro
(closed Mon), has a good range of pizzas plus the standard primi and secondi. Slightly
further from the main square, opposite Santa Caterina church at Via Canova
288, the Hostaria alla Rocca (closed Tues eve and all Wed) is a cheap bar-restaurant
that does delicious food, specializing in its home-raised pork.
the northern veneto Ásolo and around
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The Tomba Brion
Five kilometres south of Ásolo, adjoining the municipal cemetery of the village of
San Vito d’Altivole (daily 9am–7pm), stands the extraordinary Tomba Brion, the
masterpiece to which the great Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa (1906–78) devoted
much of the last nine years of his life. Though commissioned by the Brion family
(owners of a local electronics company) as their mausoleum, this is much more
than a commemoration of one particular set of individuals. Constructed as an L-
shaped enclosure of some 2200 square metres, Scarpa’s necropolis is an architectural
complex in miniature, in which the various elements – tomb, temple, pools, grass
– are deployed in a way that creates a highly evocative “formal poetry”, to use the
architect’s own phrase. The Tomba Brion exemplifies Scarpa’s renowned attention
to the relationship of forms in space and to the properties of well-crafted materials;
wood, mosaic, concrete and metal are combined exquisitely in a work that is both
massive and delicate, and is distinctively a Scarpa design while simultaneously raising
a multitude of references – to the Viennese Secession, to Frank Lloyd Wright,
to Japanese traditional architecture, and even to the monuments of ancient civilizations
(from some angles the structures are suggestive of Mayan ruins). Scarpa, as he
wished, is himself buried here, beneath a marble plinth in a shady corner.
By public transport, San Vito is most easily reached by the #4 CTM bus from
Ásolo, which passes along the main road about six times a day. (Don’t take the
#4bis – this follows a different route.) Return tickets are e3.50 from the tabacchi
near the stop; on board the cost is higher. The journey to San Vito takes about
fifteen minutes; when you get off it’s a few minutes’ walk to the cemetery, just
outside the south end of the village, at the end of Via del Cimitero.
The Villa Barbaro
Most people come away from the Villa Barbaro (March–Oct Tues, Sat & Sun
3–6pm; Nov–Feb Sat & Sun 2.30–5pm; closed Dec 24–Jan 6; e5; wwww.villadimaser.it)
at MASÈR, 7km east of Ásolo, persuaded that this is the most beautiful
house in Europe. Touring the villas of the mainland, you become used to discrepancies
between the quality of the architecture and the quality of the decoration, but
at Masèr you’ll see the best of two of the central figures of Italian civilization in
the sixteenth century – Palladio and Paolo Veronese, whose careers crossed here
and nowhere else. If you’re reliant on public transport, you’ll have to catch a bus
from Bassano via Ásolo or from Treviso; the services from Treviso to Ásolo and
Bassano all stop near the villa, though you may have to change at Montebelluna.
Getting back to Treviso, you may have to wait till around 7pm for a bus – check
the timings before setting out.
The villa was built in 1557–58 for Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, men
whose diverse cultural interests set them apart from most of the other wealthy