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The Labyrinth of Villa Pisani in Stra, an Intricate Pathway

The Labyrinth of Villa Pisani in Stra is one of the largest labyrinths in Europe and is best known for two reasons: its presence in one of Gabriele D'Annunzio's most beautiful novels and the difficulty of its path, one of the most complex in the world.

But neglect and age had inselvated it, saddened it; had stripped it of all semblance of gracefulness and equality; had changed it into a closed patch between brown and yellowish, full of inextricable ambiguities, where the slanting rays of sunset reddened it so that the tufts here and there there looked like pyres burning without smoke. It had been designed, as D’Annunzio writes, for the enjoyment of guests: the Vate thus imagined the ladies invited to the villa wandering around the meandering maze, dressed according to the fashion of the time, that is, with the “calcagnini,” typical eighteenth-century Venetian shoes provided with a high wedge (they had been invented to avoid the ’high water), and the “guardinfanti,” the structure composed of metal or wicker hoops that served to inflate the skirts by making the garment take on that particular bell shape seen in portraits of the time. Apparently, one of the most popular games played by the labyrinth’s frequenters involved a lady masquerading on the turret and revealing her identity only to the gentleman who, in a race with others, managed to reach her in the shortest possible time.

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