Close to Padua and less than an hour’s train ride from Venice, Castello del Catajo is an enormous newly-restored medieval fantasy with, so far, few foreign visitors
It’s amazing, given the millions who flock into Venice, that hardly any tourists venture beyond the lagoon. Just 50km from la Serenissima, on the fringes of the volcanic Euganean hills, which provided stone for the pavements of Venice a millennium ago, there’s an enormous undiscovered castle. Castello del Catajo was built by the Obizzi family in around 1570 and is one of the largest in Italy, with more than 350 rooms. Passionate about all things medieval, they chose to build a castle, rather than follow the fashion of the day by building a grand villa.
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