Villa Repeta Giustina

Sassatelli, Prina, Prosdocimi, Benedictines of Santa Giustina of Padua, Iskcon
santa-giustina-icona

Villa Repeta, Sassatelli, Prina, Prosdocimi, Benedictines of Santa Giustina of Padua, Iskcon.

This villa was built in the early decades of the 500s by commission of the noble Repeta family. The present-day villa is the result of a nineteenth-century renovation of the oldest buildings. The façade is characterised on the ground floor by three large round arches, currently used as windows, making it a glass façade. These arches are interspersed with massive ashlar pillars that extend into narrow pilasters up to the denticulated cornice. The upper floor of the villa, or rather the noble floor, there are three double lancet windows, while in the attic there are small rectangular openings. The structure culminates in a high pediment that rises in the centre, while at the corners rise two artistic acroters. The Repeta nobles kept the villa until the end of the eighteenth century when the noble house Sassatelli d’Imola bought it. Later, in 1820, Count Antonio Prina di Este was the owner, whose family then later sold it, towards the end of the 1800s, to the Prosdocimi family of Noventa Vicentina. The villa during the Second World War was occupied by military units and then entrusted to private families after the war. After this, the villa was left in bad condition. The Benedictine Fathers of the Abbey of Santa Giustina of Padua bought the property in 1957 and in order to make the estate habitable, the villa had to undergo various restorations. At the beginning of the Nineties, a Hare Krishna community purchased the complex and implemented improvements to the structures. Along the walls of the Villa, a façade of a small sixteenth-century oratory dedicated to St. John the Baptist can be seen. Its interior housed a marble altar above which used to stand three stone statues depicting the Blessed Virgin, St. John the Baptist and St. Lucia. At the foot of these sculptures, there is the following inscription carved: MDXXXI Templum Divi Joannis Baptiste. We can, therefore, assume the shrine would have been erected in the year 1531.

Photo postcard on page 295