Stra is renowned world-wide for its stupendous nobles residences and especially for Villa Pisani with its ballroom frescoed by Tiepolo, its stables, the park with its botanic gardens, and its hedge maze that Gabriele D'Annunzio celebrated in his poem 'Fire'. Stra owes its name to the fact that it is located on the great Roman road that leads from Padua to Altino and Aquileia. Vaunting a wealth of artworks and set in still largely intact surroundings, Stra is moreover an important industrial town, the centre of the foot wear manufacturing district founded by its most illustrious citizen, G.Luigi Voltan - a district that today produces twenty million high-quality fashion shoes, exported all over the world.

Villa Pisani Giustinian

Long used as an elegant weekend house and base for hare hunting, as the statues (inspired by the hunters in Longhi's paintings) standing under the neoclassical portico remind us, Villa Pisani Giustinian, once known as 'La Barbariga' - but some scholars contest this attribution - is located almost across from the Villa Nazionale Pisani, on the opposite bank of the Brenta. Perhaps it is because it is so overshadowed by this famous neighbour that it is neglected by a wider public (and being private is so seldom open). The harmony of the architecture, the garden, the clocks, the frescoes...all contribute to making it, in fact, one of the most beautiful on the Riviera.