The building complex, enormous and grand - it is the most imposing Venetian villa after Villa Manin in Passariano -, includes a larger body with rectangular plan facing the river and other buildings in the park. The baroque façade is interrupted by a higher central body adorned with gigantic columns of corinthian order supporting the tympanum, while the two lateral symmetrical wings stretch with Ionic pilaster strips and temple-motif at the end. Terraces and roofs are adorned with statues.
Inside the central body, which divides two court-yards, there is a portico on the ground floor joining the entrance to the garden, and on the upper floor a magnificent dance hall painted in fresco. The villa has 114 rooms with 18th century furniture and paintings by Tiepolo - famous is his “Apotheosis of the Pisani family” on the ceiling of the dance hall - and by other painters like Amigoni, Canal, Crosato, Zucarelli and Ricci. A wide park extends behind the villa: here there is the famous maze made of hedges exalted by Gabriele D’Annunzio, and other buildings like the stables, the fish-ponds, the “casa dei freschi” on the little hill, the open-air theatre, the small towers and the entrance portals along the enclosure walls.
In 1807 the villa was bought by Napoleon who gave it to Eugenio Beau-harnais Viceroy of Italy, and in 1814 it passed to the Austrian Crown, and then to the Savoia House that gave it to the State in 1886. Now it belongs to the State. The villa housed guests such as Napoleon, Beaurharnais, Maria Luigia of Parma, Alexander I of Russia, Ferdinand of Austria, Maximilian of Ausburg, Vittorio Emanuele II of Savoia, Gustav of Sweden, and in 1943 Hitler and Mussolini met here. The villa is open to the public all days from 9 to 16, and it is possible to visit only the park or both the park and the interiors.
It was erected in the 18th century by Francesco Maria Preti on Gerolamo Frigimelica’s original design. The construction was completed just in time to celebrate Alvise Pisani’s nomina-tion as doge of the Serenissima. Preti’s touch anticipated the neoclassical taste of the following years. It stands at the entrance of Stra, on the bank of the river Brenta, and thus it can be admired by passengers. It is not casual that in order to show off their richness and luxury its owners renounced to have the park along the bank. 
