Fanzolo is a fraction of the municipality of Vedelago, located between the walled city of Castelfranco Veneto and the village of Asolo in the province of Treviso. This quiet town of the March of Treviso offers several historic buildings, such as Villa Lion Pellizzer and Villa Appiani, now a nursery school.
From the historical-artistic point of view, however, it is important not to miss the sixteenth-century Villa Emo, designed by architect Andrea Palladio, a building that manages to blend classic and rustic architectural elements.
A functional building for the management of the countryside, which emerges from the villa especially in the parts around the farmyard. It was commissioned to Palladio before 1555, by Leonardo Emo, whose family owned many properties in Fanzolo in those years, and completed towards 1590, after Villa Barbaro and Villa Badoer, which shares the general approach.
The area was crossed by the ancient Via Postumia, in fact, as you can easily grasp from the entrances, the building is oriented according to the ancient street. The exteriors are essential and without decorations, dominated in the central part by the owner's house, raised on a large base, connected to the ground by a long stone ramp.
The interiors are richly decorated with frescoes by Giovanni Battista Zelotti, a disciple of Veronese, who had already worked on the Palladian construction sites of villa Godi and villa Malcontenta. The decorations celebrate the overcoming of passions and the practice of virtue, "which only life in the countryside, in peace, in the study and in the exercise of agriculture ensures", wrote Rodolfo Pallucchini.
