Located amidst the greenery of the Euganean Hills is the oldest existing maze of greenery in the world: it is the maze of Villa Barbarigo in Valsanzibio, a hamlet of Galzignano Terme, located at the foot of Mount Gallo, which rises 385 meters above sea level. The villa already existed in the 15th century and was owned by the Contarini family, one of the most illustrious families in Venice.

It passed to the Barbarigo family at the end of the 16th century, and the history of the complex, at this point, becomes decidedly singular: the nobleman Giovanni Francesco Barbarigo (sometimes referred to in the Venetian way, as “Zuane” Francesco Barbarigo), wanted to surround it with a majestic symbolic garden, a rare case on our continent, to be read and above all to be walked through as a path of purification.