Villa Giusti Suman in Zugliano, in the province of Vicenza, can be booked for conferences, weddings, concerts and exhibitions. The municipality of Zugliano owns the villa and takes reservations online. The official site gives no guest capacities, so an organiser should ask for the limits of each room before planning a layout.
Seminars and company events
Conferences are one of the four uses the villa lists. Companies, associations and public bodies can all reserve it, and a booking runs by the day. Three areas can be reserved: the noble floor, the basement floor, which the villa uses as an art gallery, and the garden. A seminar or a talk could use the frescoed halls of the noble floor, with the garden as a break area in fine weather. The villa states that it is not granted for private parties, so a birthday or a private dinner is not the kind of event it takes. Conferences, presentations, concerts and exhibitions are.
Weddings and receptions
Weddings appear on the villa's booking page under the heading Matrimoni in Villa. The site presents the villa as a place to hold the occasion. It does not describe a banquet service, an in-house kitchen or guest bedrooms, so a couple planning a meal should arrange their own caterer and ask the municipality what the villa allows. The garden, which was the inner courtyard of the former farm complex, can be booked separately from the interior.
Rooms and capacities
The noble floor has five halls, all frescoed and decorated, along with the staircase and the side rooms. The site names them: Sala della Genesi, Stanza della musica, Stanza delle divinità, Stanza delle fontane and Stanza dei cavalieri. The Sala della Genesi stands at the centre of the complex, and its frescoes, arranged on two levels, cover the walls completely. The villa has four levels in all, including a basement and an attic granary. The basement serves as a gallery. A staircase links the central projecting part of the building to the garden. No room size or capacity is published, and none is given here.
History and setting
The villa stands on the Castello hill, on the southern slope of the Bregonze hills, above the Val Grossa stream and west of the Astico torrent. It is a Venetian villa that probably dates from the 15th century, when it was the home of the noble Zoiano family. Later owners included the Aviano, Rusca, Barbieri, Zambelli and Molin families, then the Giusti del Giardino-Suman family, the parish of San Zenone and finally the municipality of Zugliano. The Barbieri, who held it from 1643 to 1711, most likely arranged the building as a whole and decorated its rooms.
The facade is long and symmetrical, with coloured string courses and window surrounds topped by pediments. The central pediment carries stucco festoons and putti holding a coat of arms, and seven statues of allegories of trades stand along the top. Inside the noble floor, a small fresco of a Pietà is attributed in recent research to the 17th-century local painter Pietro Tiso. A car park now occupies the area east of the villa where the orchard and garden once lay.
