Passariano, a small village in the municipality of Codroipo (Udine), altitude 32 m/105 ft above sea level. Train station at Codroipo, 3.5 km/2 miles to the northwest.
The last doge of the Venetian Republic, Lodovico Manin was from a Friulian family and it was therefore in Friuli that the Manin family built, during the mid-seventeenth century, this huge villa that overlooks a large piazza defined by long semicircular porticos.
After the fall of the Republic, the Villa was used by Napoleon as his general headquarters, and it was here that he prepared the Treaty of Campoformido by which the Venetian territories were ceded to Austria. Today the Villa is used as a venue for exhibitions, while the large park to the rear is now open to the public.
The villa can be reached easily from Codroipo thanks to the bike path that leads from the village directly to Passariano. The more scenic arrival, though, is from the south; the villa first appears in the distance through fields of corn, and preceded by two towers that mark the entrance to the large piazza.
During 2007, in the large piazza overlooking the villa, a curious piece of art was installed by the Polish artist Piotr Uklanski: a huge stylized hand that seems to come out of the lawn and when seen from the center of the piazza appears to be projected onto the wall of the Villa.
