Villa Franzan, Venetian villa complex in Barcon, Sarcedo, Italy

Villa Franzan is a 17th-century Venetian villa complex in the Barcon district of Sarcedo. Its three-storey main house has fourteen windows per floor, a large curved window with balustrade and a human head on the piano nobile, and a triangular pediment on the south facade. Arcaded barchesse with a tall dovecote tower once flanked it.

The Franzani family, cloth merchants from Lake Como who settled in Thiene in the late 16th century, built the villa around 1665, when Count Domenico Franzani declared his holdings at Barcon. The only certain date is 1666, the year the Oratory of Saint Anthony was erected. A 1673 map shows the finished complex. In the 20th century it housed the minor seminary of the Diocese of Padua and has been abandoned for four decades.

Locals still call the whole complex Il Barcon, a name meaning "large enclosure of fields" that first appears in the 1541-1544 Balanzon, where the Vicentine nobleman Rizzardo Alidosio is recorded as owning 75 fields in the Barchon district. The Franzani, cloth merchants from Lake Como who settled in Thiene at the end of the 16th century, gave the name to the buildings they raised around 1665. A stone capital at the north-west corner of the walled enclosure carries a 1432 inscription commemorating the apparition of the Virgin of Caravaggio to the pious Giannetta.

The property sits in the Barcon neighborhood of Sarcedo and is currently closed to visitors. You should know that the grounds remain empty and viewing is not possible from the road or nearby areas.

The name Il Barcon, still used by locals for the whole complex, means "large enclosure of fields". A 1673 map shows the estate as completed: the manor, arcaded barchesse with a tall dovecote tower, a third wing to the south, and two gateways in the west wall.