"Animated" tours to discover Villa Contarini, in Piazzola sul Brenta, in the company of actors from teatrOrtaet. Villa Contarini lends itself particularly well to telling the story of how Venetian villas gradually and over time took on multiple and disparate functions.

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, Venetian villas played the role of economic fulcrum of the lands owned by the Serenissima's patriciate, both as places to stay and vacation, but also charging in some cases with important functions of civil and political representation.

The animated tour opens with the Cat and the Lion, characters that summarize in a mythical-symbolic key the relationship between Venice and its hinterland.

Inside the villa, one goes from room to room, changing style, era and atmosphere, continually hovering between history and theater.

The vicissitudes of the patrician families at the time of the Serenissima are evoked: from the marriage of Maria da Carrara, who brings as dowry to the Contarini family the first settlement, to thePleasure Clock that marks in the seventeenth century the festivities organized by Marco Contarini (Procurator of St. Mark's), to the decline, when the villa passes to other noble Venetian families, until the rebirth with the Camerini family.