36 Hours in the Veneto: Palladian Villas, Scarpa's Tomba Brion, and the Art of Bunburying

After the 60th Venice Biennale, writer Robert Goff escapes to the Veneto for 36 hours, visiting Palladian villas and Carlo Scarpa's Tomba Brion. He invents a fictitious collector—a 'Bunbury' after Oscar Wilde—to justify his solo trip. Guided by Roberta Parlato, he sees Villa Godi, Villa Barbaro-Maser (with frescoes by Paolo Veronese and a Nymphaeum fed by a Palladio-designed hydraulic system), the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza (Palladio's last building, opened 1585), and Villa La Rotonda (designed 1566, with an air-cooling system via a stone grate of Boreas). The day ends at Tomba Brion in San Vito d'Altivole, a 22,000-square-foot Brutalist necropolis by Carlo Scarpa, blending Palladian precision with Japanese tearoom and Zen garden influences. Goff stays at Hotel Cipriani in Asolo, a 16th-century villa once owned by Robert Browning, purchased in the 1960s by Rupert Guinness and run by Giuseppe Cipriani. He reflects on Palladio's global influence—from the White House to Caesars Palace—and the dark roads of Palladianism under fascism and Nazi architecture. The article includes a guide to Roberta Parlato, recommended reading (Palladio's 'I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura', Witold Rybczynski's 'The Perfect House', etc.), and films ('Palladio: The Power of Architecture', 'Carlo Scarpa: The Pavilion on the Water').