Padua, the case of the degradation of Palazzo Gradenigo ends up in Parliament

The case of Palazzo Gradenigo, the splendid aristocratic mansion in Piove di Sacco (Padua) that is also the most important Venetian villa in Saccisica, the territory, also known as “Piovese,” that includes a dozen municipalities over an area of 253 square kilometers and is located in the southeastern part of the province of Padua, ends up in Parliament. Palazzo Gradenigo, also known as “the Palace of Saccisica,” covers four thousand square meters and has a park of three and a half hectares, is located in the center of the town and has been waiting for a long time to be restored. Thus, five senators, namely Margherita Corrado (first signatory), Luisa Angrisani, Bianca Laura Granato and Nicola Morra (all from the Gruppo Misto) and Elio Lannutti (Italia dei Valori) have addressed a question to Culture Minister Dario Franceschini, asking what the government intends to do in the face of the “neglect” and “precarious conservation conditions of the entire complsso.”

The decline of Palazzo Gradenigo, the senators reconstruct, has distant origins: in fact, it began in the period between the two world wars, with the parceling out into 12 units then rented out, which led to the whitewashing of the frescoed walls of the living rooms and the creation of partitions to divide the large spaces into smaller entities. From the 1970s to 2002, then, the only resident present in the property was Alberto Radini-Tedeschi, who, however, lacked the resources to cope with the restoration work, with the result that the deterioration of Palazzo Gradenigo continued. In the meantime, theRegional Institute for Venetian Villas, realizing the situation, had arranged to have the roof fixed and other work done, which, however, had left the building without shutters and filled with debris on each floor.

The story continued in 1996, when a nonprofit association, the “Friends of Gradenigo,” was formed, which through informational activities and a fundraising effort managed to put together 1.65 billion liras (regional and ministerial), thanks in part to a site visit by the Senate Committee on Public Education and Cultural Heritage. The Superintendency’s construction site was started in 2002, but without the planned agreement to open it to the public, due to Radini-Tedeschi’s infirmity that would lead to his passing a few months later. With the funds exhausted, the work came to a halt: the palace had been secured and the facades restored, but much remained to be done, and even the windows remained closed only by temporary nylon-covered frames. The Friends of Gradenigo had, however, made time for some time to set up a minimal tour that, for the first time, allowed the public to admire the works still preserved in the building.

In 2004, after the death of Radini-Tedeschi, the new owner, the Treviso-based Roberto Clamar, “not only broke off relations with municipal and ministerial authorities, as well as with the volunteers of the aforementioned association,” the senators say, “but emptied the building of all movable property, including the statues that adorned the garden, where he had a great many trees cut down and left uncultivated, breaking municipal regulations. It is known, moreover, that the palace’s library contained numerous historical documents related to the close collaboration woven over the centuries by the Gradenigo and the Radini-Tedeschi with the municipality of Piove di Sacco.” Even, in 2014 the Carabinieri for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (TPC) of Venice were forced to seize the property because of the unauthorized transformation of the palace’s former oratory into a massage center and part of the garden into a parking lot to that functional. In 2016, the century-old mulberry trees were uprooted and the pruning of tall trees was carried out, which were capitalized, at the initiative of the Bacchiglione drainage consortium, with which Clamar had previously agreed, “again without prior authorization from the Superintendence,” reconstruct the question’s signatories, who add: “The complaint against both by Legambiente is not joined by the municipality, which has always been silent despite the havoc wreaked on the villa, nor does any defense of the public interest come from the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, despite the regulatory provisions of Legislative Decree no. 42 of 2004.”

“The indolence of the municipality has an explanation,” say the senators: “precisely with the local authority, since 2008, Clamar initiates several attempts at real estate transformation. They present together, in fact, in that year, a program for the use of the complex that may provide for its dismemberment into 12 co-habitative, associative and representative ’realities,’ a program that ’forgets’ the public funding of the restorations carried out and entails an oversized economic valuation of the complex. However, in the conference organized ad hoc by the association ”Friends of Gradenigo,“ on May 24, 2008, said intentions are disavowed and a more shrewd assessment halves the asserted estimate.”

A few years later, a new appraisal by the Internal Revenue Service, requested by another municipal administration, further reduced the value of the villa, which the entity then proposed to the Ministry to expropriate for public utility. with the prospect of creating a public-private consortium to deal with the purchase. However, despite the Ministry’s favorable opinion, the fall of that council interrupted the plans, and the new administration dusted off, in 2019, the initial real estate use program, providing even more explicitly than before for the coexistence of the commercial and housing functions, as well as showing itself more interested in the rearrangement of green spaces to “host public events” and the “monumental completion of Via Garibaldi” with a view to “further enhancing the area’s stores and housing” than in the preservation and promotion of the historic building.

Finally, on October 29, 2021, the Friends of Gradenigo launched an appeal for the restoration of the Palace, which was signed by 1,080 citizens. The appeal had been addressed to the mayor of Piove di Sacco, the Veneto Region, the Soprintendenza archeologia belle arti e paesaggio for the metropolitan area of Venice and the provinces of Belluno, Padua and Treviso, which received representatives of the association last September and made an inspection in December, and the Carabinieri TPC. Several local newspapers, such as Il Mattino di Padova, Padova Oggi, and Radio Gamma 5, have covered the case. At the moment, the senators write, “while the spontaneous vegetation clings to the freshly renovated walls and the nylon of the frames placed to temporarily close the light points has been a memory for years, so that the villa has returned to being a shelter for pigeons, it seems that rainwater has begun to penetrate the building again, even from the roof, and that unknown persons remove bricks from the fence wall on a daily basis, without anyone intervening.” The president of the Friends of Gradenigo, Mario Miotto, stated last August in an interview with the very Mattino di Padova that “after 17 years of neglect, the west and north facades are unrecognizable. Not to mention the compromised sanitary situation of the park, a stone’s throw from the hospital.” Palazzo Gradenigo, he stressed, “was handed over to the owner as perfectly visitable, just as had been requested by the Superintendency. This, however, never happened, and the responsibility for all this negligence lies with the owner and precisely with the cultural heritage protection agencies, the same ones, moreover, that financed the construction site. Similar responsibilities also fall on the municipal administrations that have succeeded each other from 2004 to the present because they have been unable to protect the city’s most important monument. An asset that, although private, has been the recipient of substantial public funding and, if opened to the public, could represent the cultural hub of Saccisica. As far as we are concerned, we will persist in our work of persuasion and information.”

The petitioners therefore ask the minister if it is possible to know what actions to protect Palazzo Gradenigo were taken by the Superintendency before and after the restoration work in the early 2000s, and in particular if and when it enjoined the property, as current regulations require it to do, to take action to ensure the safety and preservation of the monument, except to intervene in place of that and then retaliate afterwards should it encounter, as it does, a stubborn refusal. Again, the senators ask to know what was the outcome of the inspection conducted by the Superintendency in December 2021 and what initiatives the Ministry intends to take to counter its ruin, which seems to be caused above all by the sloth and unwillingness of institutional decision-makers to oppose the recurring attempts at speculation that have so far been opposed only by local associations. Finally, we ask to know when the superintendent will agree with the property on ways and times of public access to that monument of high cultural and identity value.

In the photo: Palazzo Gradenigo (Google Street View)

Padua, the case of the degradation of Palazzo Gradenigo ends up in Parliament

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