Bevilacqua () is a (municipality) with 1,927 inhabitants in the

province of Verona The province of Verona (Italian: ''provincia di Verona'') is a province of the Veneto region in Italy. On its northwestern border, Lake Garda—Italy's largest—is divided between Verona and the provinces of Brescia (Lombardy region) and Trentin ...

Veneto Veneto, officially the Region of Veneto, is one of the 20 regions of Italy, located in the Northeast Italy, north-east of the country. It is the fourth most populous region in Italy, with a population of 4,851,851 as of 2025. Venice is t ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

History

The Comune di Bevilacqua began as a settlement of ancient

Venetic Venetic ( ) is an extinct Indo-European language, most commonly classified into the Italic subgroup, that was spoken by the Veneti people in ancient times in northeast Italy (Veneto and Friuli) and part of modern Slovenia, between the Po ...

people on the banks of the

Adige The Adige is the second-longest river in Italy, after the Po. It rises near the Reschen Pass in the Vinschgau in the province of South Tyrol, near the Italian border with Austria and Switzerland, and flows through most of northeastern Italy ...

River, documented to 589 AD. The fortification of this settlement eventually came to be known as the Bevilacqua Castle, located in the Principality of Bevilacqua established on 7 May 1059. In the 14th century, Count Guglielmo Bevilacqua began a restoration and expansion of the castle, completed by his son Francesco. In 1532, Count Gianfrancesco Bevilacqua commissioned

Michele Sanmicheli Michele Sanmicheli, sometimes also transcribed as Sammicheli, Sanmichele or Sammichele (Verona, 1484There is no certainty about the date of his birth. Vasari reports 1484, while architectural historian Giulio Sancassani, through a study of his fat ...

to completely renovate the medieval building and convert it into a villa with a new and more comfortable interior. In 1756, Count Gaetano Ippolito Bevilacqua renovated part of the castle. After damage caused during the

Napoleonic wars {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Napoleonic Wars , partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars , image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg , caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...

at the beginning of the 19th century, the castle was set on fire by

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

n troops in 1848. After 1860, Baroness Felicita La Masa Bevilacqua had the castle renovated in successive stages. The external walls were decorated with merlons and the entire building acquired a neo-gothic savour in line with the romantic spirit of that time. In 1932, the family donated the castle to the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

state and commissioned Engineer Eleuterio Mutto's design for converting the castle into a nursing home ("Asilo di Quiete Bevilacqua-La Masa"). In 1945 the castle was entrusted to the

Salesian Society The Salesians of Don Bosco (SDB), formally known as the Society of Saint Francis de Sales (), is a religious congregation of men in the Catholic Church, founded in 1859 by the Italian priest John Bosco to help poor and migrant youth during the ...

, who used it as a boarding school until 1966. In 1980, the castle underwent a total restoration program aimed at the architectural recovery of the magnificence of the 16th century.

Main sights

The Bevilacqua Castle is between

Padua Padua ( ) is a city and ''comune'' (municipality) in Veneto, northern Italy, and the capital of the province of Padua. The city lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, west of Venice and southeast of Vicenza, and has a population of 20 ...

and

Verona Verona ( ; ; or ) is a city on the Adige, River Adige in Veneto, Italy, with 255,131 inhabitants. It is one of the seven provincial capitals of the region, and is the largest city Comune, municipality in the region and in Northeast Italy, nor ...

and from

Montagnana Montagnana is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Padova, in Veneto (northern Italy). Neighbouring communes are Borgo Veneto, Casale di Scodosia, Urbana, Bevilacqua, Pojana Maggiore, Pressana, Minerbe and Roveredo di Guà. , the popul ...

; it has been meticulously maintained and restored and is open to visitors. The external medieval architecture encloses a 16th-century interior ascribed to the famous architect

. The first floor offers room to accommodate up to 500 guests and is surrounded on three sides by a hanging garden. The internal court, with its porticos, offers additional room for buffets or special evenings. The Bevilacqua Castle also hosts a standing exhibition of antique furniture.

References

Cities and towns in Veneto Castles in Italy {{Veneto-geo-stub

History

Main sights

See also

References