VILLAS OF VENETIA 
dows. So little is known of the Venetian villa-builders 
that this word as to their general tendencies must replace 
the exact information which still remains to be gathered. 
Many delightful examples of the Venetian maison de 
plaisance are still to be found in the neighbourhood of 
Padua and Treviso, along the Brenta, and in the coun- 
try between the Euganeans and the Monti Berici. Un- 
fortunately, in not more than one or two instances have 
the old gardens of these houses been preserved in their 
characteristic form; and, by a singular perversity of fate, 
it happens that the villas which have kept their gardens 
are not typical of the Venetian style. One of them, the 
castle of Cattajo, at Battaglia in the Euganean Hills, 
stands in fact quite apart from any contemporary style. 
This extraordinary edifice, built for the Obizzi of Venice 
about 1550, is said to have been copied from the plans 
of a castle in Tartary brought home by Marco Polo. 
It shows, at any rate, a deliberate reversion, in mid- 
cinque-cento, to a kind of Gothicism which had become 
obsolete in northern Italy three hundred years earlier ; 
and the mingling of this rude style with classic detail 
and Renaissance sculpture has produced an effect pic- 
turesque enough to justify so quaint a tradition. 
Cattajo stands on the edge of the smiling Euganean 
country, its great fortress-like bulk built up against a 
wooded knoll with a little river at its base. Crossing 
the river by a bridge flanked by huge piers surmounted 
with statues, one reaches a portcullis in a massive gate- 
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