Villa Giusti Bevilacqua detta Palazzo Rosso

Villa Giusti Bevilacqua, known as “Palazzo Rosso”, is a 16th-century Venetian villa belonging to the Giusti family of the San Anastasia branch.

The palace is believed to have been built in 1580 by Gerolamo Giusti, husband of Eurizia Verità. Their sons and heirs, Gasparo and Francesco, married Ginevra Dalla Torre and Antonia Bevilacqua Lazise respectively; the coats of arms among the decorative friezes attest to these unions. At an unspecified time, the property passed to Antonia’s family line.
The noble residence is a small yet elegant building, featuring an atrium with rusticated arches surmounted by four slender pilasters framing three windows of the piano nobile. Seven small round windows beneath the eaves enliven the distinctive reddish-brown façade, from which the villa derives its nickname, Palazzo Rosso.

All interior spaces, including the staircases, are decorated with frescoes. Many date back to the late 16th century, contemporaneous with the construction of the building. On the ground floor, one room is decorated with mascarons holding baskets of fruit, and another features a band of graceful grotesques beneath the ceiling, for which it is not unreasonable to suggest the hand of Bernardino d’India.
The main hall on the first floor is markedly more scenic in effect. It is reached via a staircase with a vaulted ceiling and walls also fully frescoed, depicting a flowered pergola animated by cherubs, some flying with garlands, others playing the mandolin. The Madonna at the top of the staircase, attributed to Pietro Rotari, dates from a later period.
In the hall, two large biblical scenes—the Finding of Moses and Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro—are framed by a broad decorative band featuring cherubs, musicians, birds, and unusual motifs of monkeys and light- and dark-skinned children feeding bound fauns; beside each figure an animal is depicted. Along the sides, tall caryatids on pedestals appear to support the wooden ceiling.

In 1922, the villa underwent restoration, during which the frescoes were rediscovered after the removal of plaster from the walls. The lime coating had been applied for disinfection purposes during the plague epidemic of 1630. The restoration was overseen by the painter Angelo Zamboni, who frescoed landscapes and valley scenes over much of the lower-floor hall, where the original 16th-century frescoes could no longer be recovered.