“I’ve long recognized the vital importance of the relationship between the art, the architecture, and the countryside of the Villa,” says Montresor, who has maintained a thriving architectural practice since 1972 from an office in the residence.
During the restoration of his ancestral home, Montresor admits to feeling “a bit scared because I was invested with a great responsibility, which made me particularly sensitive to what needed to be done. Every choice was an important one.”
Once again, the Villa is poised to re-emerge as a private domain, a luxurious resort, or both, as has been the case with the Montresor family. Whatever it becomes, the Villa will remain a key site near Via Claudia Augusta and in Veneto. Now that Montresor's restoration work is complete, as well as his detailed research about the land, his family, and history of the region, Montresor says, with a certain wistfulness, “I viscerally love this Villa and I am deeply close to the land.”
Whoever comes to live here will surely feel that same connection to Villa del Quar’s history and the life that surrounds it. A new history is soon to begin.
With the zeal of a scholar, Montresor has researched the history of the property, which over the centuries has come to include a contemplative chapel, a swimming pool, winding stone stairways, a barrel-vaulted wine cellar and restaurant space, decorative friezes, manicured parkland, and formal gardens punctuated by rocketing cypresses and backdropped by the precise rows of vineyards. In the ten-year restoration work that Montresor undertook, the residence earned a designation as a national monument by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage, no minor accomplishment in Veneto where there are some 4,000 notable villas.
“The whole of Villa del Quar is now considered a work of art,” Montresor says with earned pride. “We have managed to bring back the residence, the gardens, the orchards, and the countryside to its ancient glory.” Having spent so much time on the grounds as a boy, Montresor continues to “thank my grandmother and my father for driving me to appreciate the joys and values of country life in this extraordinary region of Italy.”
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In Fair Verona
by DAVID MASELLO
Villa del Quar, a centuries-old historic property in northern Italy’s Veneto, is poised for a new history.
Villa del Quar is a remarkably timeless estate, boasting 16 bedrooms and vast manicured parklands.
For nearly two millennia, it seems everyone has wanted to live on Via Claudia Augusta, an ancient Roman chariot road stretching from the Adriatic Sea all the way to the Danube River. Though a mere eight meters at its widest, it served as a vital corridor traversing the Alps from northern Italy into what is now Germany and Austria. Today, some 435 miles of it are a scenic bike trail.
Ever since its route was established around A.D. 46, people have not only traveled Via Claudia, but erected villas along its path. One such retreat, which rose around the year A.D. 931, was Villa del Quar, though the lavish couplet of villas and manicured grounds that currently occupy the site were built in the 16th century.
Named for its Italian commune, Quart, Villa del Quar is just kilometers from the heart of Verona — so close that the pinings of Juliet from her balcony to her beloved Romeo might have been heard from the grounds in Shakespeare’s day. Among the handsomest of such structures within San Pietro in Cariano, the villa has functioned in recent decades as an exclusive boutique resort, surrounded by fertile vineyards that yield crisp Valpolicella wine. The intimate 12-room, 10-bath inn is positioned adjacent to a three-level, four-bedroom main residence, whose lemon-hued façade is marked by green shutters and a red-tiled roof.
The Villa’s current owner, architect Leopoldo Montresor, recalls the colorful tale of how the property came into his family — through his great-grandfather, Alfredo Danese: “It’s been said that he bought Villa del Quar without ever having seen it, from a man who had won it at the Venice Casino, and then gave it to my paternal grandmother.”
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