Giuseppe Jappelli (1783 - 1852)

Giuseppe Jappelli (Venice 1783-1852), moved to Padua in 1807 to work as "engineer of roads and waterways". He is famous for designing two important cafés in Padua, the Pedrocchi Café in neoclassical style and the neogothic Pedrocchino Café.
However, he devoted most of his time to the design of gardens, particularly in the provinces of Padua and Rome. The vision of the Middle Ages that emerges from Jappelli's works is both mysterious and highly suggestive, a time inhabited by knights and crusaders. Moreover, it is also permeated by Masonic elements and makes use of many symbols of the sect, of which Jappelli was a member. On the whole, his reconstruction of the Middle Ages is extremely didactic, aiming at the spread of chivalric values. Among his numerous works are the suggestive garden of the Villa Cittadella Vigordarzere in Saonara near Padua (1817) and the park of Villa Torlonia in Rome (1832), created in order to grant the Torlonia family, who had only recently acquired the status nobility, a medieval past.