In the 1800s, the Sacerdoti family, who became owners of the villa, built a remarkable collection centre for drying tobacco, in the years when the crop was very popular in the Paduan countryside.

Then, the original barchessa was overbuilt and converted into a tobacco dryhouse, thus creating this marvellous and imposing building, which underwent a painstaking and ingenious renovation to transform it into a unique and exciting place.

This original building of about 600 square metres is intended for business or catering activities or for conferences, exhibitions or events.

Plan of Essiccatoio and South and North Facade

In the street-front portion of the Dryhouse there is a chapel/oratory, a small jewel.

The Oratory of Saint Anne is an aristocratic chapel (consecrated in 1708).

It was restored to its original splendour in the second half of the 20th century when commissioner Leonildo Mainardi and his wife Ersilia Bressanin bought the ruined villa and began renovation work.

Once used as a farmer's dwelling (it was turned into a synagogue when the property passed from the Mocenigo to the Trieste family of Jewish origin), the oratory dedicated to St. Anne (in honour of Mainardi’s mother was embellished with the elegant cobweb ceiling truss, 18th-century columns and a small apse, surmounted by a semi-dome, which houses the altar.

One must not overlook the memorial plaque to Giorgio Mainardi, a selfless and heroic soldier who died in the liberation struggle on 23 November 1943.

The chapel also features a 15th-century sculpture: the figures of Christ and the Madonna in white marble
with gilded contours, modelled with refined sensitivity and vigour.

Almost two centuries after its initial construction, on 26 July 1972, the newly restored chapel was blessed in the presence of the authorities of Abano Terme.