Canova at Possagno, from the Gypsotheca to the Tempio, and then Asolo

Getting there

Possagno is a small village and parking is free; to sleep, the nearest area with services is the one of the Comune of Asolo. The Comune of Possagno does not publish a motorhome area.

• At Possagno, according to the museum, you park free in the open space in front of the Gypsotheca for two hours at most; with no time limit in the car park next to it and along the Stradone del Tempio, the avenue that climbs to the church. Whether a motorhome fits the museum does not say. In the car park in via Serafin, five minutes on foot from the centre, motorhomes stop too: it is free, without services and without shade, with half a dozen places, and on a steep slope
• At Asolo the historic centre is closed to traffic on Sundays and public holidays from 9:00 to 20:00, and on Saturday evenings, and the streets of the town are narrow and uphill: the motorhome stays below. The Comune's motorhome area is inside the Forestuzzo car park, about 400 metres uphill from the centre, and you reach it from via Forestuzzo: it is open all year, has fifteen pitches with water, emptying and electricity, tables and a barbecue, and you let yourself in by scanning the QR code next to the barrier. The Comune does not publish the rate: in August 2025 people who stopped there paid 10 euros for 24 hours, with electricity, in cash to the attendant who comes round in the evening
• The Forestuzzo car park next to the area is free Monday to Saturday and paid on Sundays and public holidays; further down, on the road between Montebelluna and Bassano, the Ca' Vescovo car park is free, a couple of kilometres from the centre, and from there a shuttle bus goes up to the town every half hour, with the ticket bought on board
• At Maser, Villa di Maser has its own car park in front of the villa; whether a motorhome fits the villa does not say
• Without the motorhome: the nearest station to Possagno is Cornuda, a quarter of an hour by car according to the museum; from Bassano and from Castelfranco there are the Mobilità di Marca buses

Practical information

Start in the morning at Possagno, where the museum and the Tempio are closed on Mondays, and move on to Asolo in the afternoon: in winter the Asolo museum opens Friday to Sunday until 22 January and then only on Saturdays and Sundays, and Villa di Maser only at weekends.

Contacts

Where it is

Possagno · Veneto

You set off from

Notes

• The Museo Gypsotheca Antonio Canova, at via Canova 74, according to the museum in 2026 is open Tuesday to Friday from 9:30 to 18:00, on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays from 9:30 to 19:00, with last entry an hour before closing. It is closed on Mondays, unless they are public holidays, at Christmas, on 1 January and at Easter; it is open, on the other hand, on Easter Monday, 25 April, 1 May, 2 June, 15 August, 1 November, 8 and 26 December. The ticket, valid for the Gypsotheca and the birthplace, costs 13 euros, 10 reduced for students up to 25 and over 65; the family ticket, two parents with all their children up to 18, costs 25 euros, and up to 6 you do not pay. On days of special openings and special visits the price may change
• Inside: the nineteenth century hall, with the plaster models arranged as they were in the studio in Rome, from the monument to Vittorio Alfieri to Mars and Venus, to Perseus with the head of Medusa; Scarpa's wing, with the Graces reflected in the water, Hercules and Lichas and Theseus defeating the Centaur, on loan from Venice, George Washington, Canova's self-portrait, and in the display cases the terracotta sketch models; the stables, with a large plaster horse. The birthplace has the hall of mirrors on the ground floor, on the first floor the room where Canova was born, with his spectacles, his tools and his clothes, in the basement the sculpture studio, and the tempera paintings on paper with a black background, with dancers and nymphs, that Canova painted here between 1798 and 1804. Behind the house are the garden and the brolo, the orchard. In the toilets, which you reach by crossing the garden, there is a baby changing table; the museum also has a free guide for your phone, and asks you to bring your own earphones
• The exhibition: from 1 November 2026 to 25 April 2027 the Gypsotheca shows "Opera grandiosa ed immortale", a grand and immortal work, on the funerary monument that Canova designed between 1806 and 1808 for admiral Horatio Nelson, the victor of Trafalgar, and that was never built: the drawings, the small plaster model, the three red wax models on slate just restored, and a small bas-relief found in the storerooms, shown for the first time. It is included in the ticket
• The guided tours of the Gypsotheca, on top of the ticket: on Saturdays at 10:30, 11:30, 15:30 and 16:30, on Sundays and public holidays at 10:30, 11:30, 12:30, 15:30, 16:30 and 17:30, 5 euros per person, up to 25 people, paid at the ticket office, and booking is recommended. On Saturdays at 12:30 there is one in English. For families the guided tour starts from the birthplace and tells about the sculptor's materials and the myths of the statues: every Sunday at 16:00, and on the first Saturday of the month, when it is free; it costs 5 euros per person, children do not pay, and it must be booked. The creative workshops, a visit and then work in the museum's workshop, are on the third Saturday of the month from October to June at 16:00, with the 25 euro family ticket and booking: in November there is none in the calendar, and the next one is on 19 December 2026. Without booking, ask at the ticket office for the treasure hunt map, with a crossword to solve among the statues, the museum's explorer certificate and a small prize, at no cost beyond the ticket
• Evenings at the museum: from February to August and from October to December the museum also opens in the evening, usually on the first Saturday of the month; the next is "Alla luce di Psiche", in the light of Psyche, on 7 November 2026 from 19:00, with a tasting of meringues
• The Tempio canoviano, at the top of the Stradone del Tempio, is the parish church, and is run by the Opera Dotazione del Tempio. According to the foundation it is open Tuesday to Friday from 10:00 to 17:00, on Saturdays from 10:00 to 17:30, on Sundays and public holidays from 12:00 to 17:30; it is closed on Mondays, at Christmas, on 1 January and at Easter, last entry is half an hour before closing, and during masses and funerals visitors do not go in. Inside are the altarpiece of the high altar, painted by Canova, and his tomb, with that of his half-brother. The panoramic route on the dome costs 3 euros, 2 under 18 and over 65, 7 for a family: children under 6 do not go up, and up to 18 they go up with an adult. On Sundays and public holidays at 15:00 and 16:00 there are guided tours of the church, 4 euros per person; ask the custodian, on 320 4955294, or at visite@tempiocanoviano.it. The Tempio's website asks for a ticket only for the dome and for the guided tours
• The combined tickets: whoever has the Gypsotheca ticket pays the reduced price at the Musei civici of Bassano del Grappa, which have a Canova room with the works donated by Sartori and almost two thousand of his drawings, and vice versa. A full-price ticket for one of the five museums of the Isola dei Musei (the Gypsotheca, Villa di Maser, Villa Emo at Fanzolo, the Museo civico of Asolo and the Museo Casa Giorgione at Castelfranco) gives the reduced price at the other four
• Asolo, a few kilometres away, is a walled town on a hill, with piazza Garibaldi in front of the cathedral, the castle of Caterina Cornaro, the queen of Cyprus who was lady of Asolo from 1489 to 1510, and the Rocca on Monte Ricco, a fortress built between the end of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth century, with walls fifteen metres high, from which the view goes from the Dolomites to Venice. You reach the Rocca only on foot: ten to fifteen minutes of stepped path from the centre, passing the Albergo al Sole, or about twenty minutes on a road that is almost all asphalted. Eleonora Duse, the actress, wanted to be buried at Asolo, in the cemetery of Sant'Anna, outside the town to the west. Every second Sunday of the month, since 1976, there is the antiques market, with more than fifty stalls in piazza Brugnoli and the streets of the centre; in July and August it is held in the evening
• The Museo civico of Asolo, on the square, has the archaeological section, the picture gallery with sculptures by Canova, the cathedral treasury, and the rooms of Caterina Cornaro, of Eleonora Duse and of Freya Stark, the English traveller who lived in Asolo. According to the museum it opens from 2 October to 22 January on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, and the rest of the year only on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, from 9:30 to 12:30 and from 15:00 to 18:00. The museum costs 7 euros, 6 reduced, 22 for a family; the Rocca 5 euros, 4 reduced, and it is open on the same days as the museum from 10:00, and from 23 January to 31 March it closes at 17:00; the museum ticket with the Rocca costs 10 euros, 8 reduced, 40 for a family. The Torre civica of the castle, open on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, houses Freya Stark's photographs of the Middle East. On 31 October 2026 at 16:00 the museum holds a costume treasure hunt for children, 8 euros with the Torre, to be booked
• Villa Freya, Freya Stark's house in via Marconi, has a garden with the remains of a Roman theatre and centuries-old holm oaks; until 24 January 2027 it hosts the exhibition "Klimt a Villa Freya", with prints and three original drawings by Gustav Klimt and the magazine of the Vienna Secession. Exhibition and garden cost 15 euros, 12 reduced, over 65 and under 16; the garden alone 10 euros, 7 reduced; up to 8 you do not pay. Dogs are not allowed, and you enter the villa in half-hour slots. With the exhibition ticket the Museo civico costs less
• Villa di Maser, that is Villa Barbaro, the villa that Andrea Palladio built for the Barbaro brothers around 1560, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has six rooms frescoed by Paolo Veronese: the fake doors from which a page boy and a little girl peep out, the lady of the house looking down from a painted balustrade with the nurse and her children, a little dog, and in a corner a pair of slippers and a broom forgotten by the painter. Two hundred metres away is the Tempietto, the church that Palladio built for the villa. According to the villa, in 2026 from April to October it is open Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 to 18:00; from November to 8 December only on Saturdays and Sundays from 10:00 to 17:00, and also on 8 December, on Tuesday 3 November until 14:00 and on Thursday 12 November until 16:30; from 9 to 31 December only on the 27th, 29th and 30th. It is closed every Monday, and in 2026 from January to mid February it was open only from 2 to 5 January. The ticket costs 12 euros, 9 reduced, 5.50 from 8 to 14, 28 for a family with two adults and up to four children; under 8 you do not pay. On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays there is the guided tour of the villa and the Tempietto, an hour and a quarter, 18 euros. For young people there is a treasure hunt all year, 5 euros on top of the ticket, arriving by 15:30. The frescoes may not be photographed; dogs are allowed only if small, carried in arms. In the villa there is the winery, with tastings
• On Mondays the Gypsotheca, the Tempio and Villa di Maser are closed; at Asolo the museum and the Rocca open only from Friday or from Saturday to Sunday. In winter the Gypsotheca stays open with the same hours, while Villa di Maser opens only at weekends until 8 December and then almost never until February

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