San Vito: Brion Tomb Guided Tour ENG｜Italy

The Brion Tomb, donated to FAI by Ennio and Donatella Brion, was commissioned in 1969 by their mother Onorina Brion Tomasin, in memory of the deceased husband, Giuseppe Brion, born in San Vito di Altivole, founder and owner of the Brionvega Firm, a leading company in the production of electronics design devices during the Second post-war period.
This is Carlo Scarpa’s last work, one of his most complex, original, significant and expensive creation. It was realized between 1970 and 1978, the year of the architect’s death in Japan.

The monumental funerary building is surrounded by the Treviso countryside, set against the Asolo’s Hills, on the edge of the city of San Vito D’Altivole and close to its small graveyard. The access is through a monumental entrance, called propylei, characterized by a scenic entrance in the shape of two intertwined circles, as a symbol of the conjugal love on which the whole project is based on. The whole area is a L-Shaped 2200 square meters, raised above the country floor and surrounded by an inclined wall, in order to allow the view of the surrounding landscape. Made of green meadows and furrowed by canals with water lilies, it is designed with geometric shapes reminiscent of Islamic paradises and Japanese gardens. There you can find four buildings. The building’s heart is the so-called arcosolio, a low arch-bridge made of a shimmering mantle of glass tiles with gold leaf behind, which protects the sarcophagi of the two spouses Giuseppe and Onorina Brion, symbolically inclined as if eternally are facing each other.

On one side of the space stands, there is an isolated meditation pavilion on the water, specially placed in front of the arcosolio; on the other side, there are the so-called ‘’tomb of parents’’ and the ‘’chapel or temple’’ used for funeral ceremonies, which can also be accessed from the outside of the cemetery, surrounded by water and a garden of cypresses. Consequently, in a subdued and discreet space, on the border between the private memorial and the public cemetery, there is the Carlo Scarpa’s tomb, who wanted to be buried here and today hosts his wife Nini Lazzari and it was designed by their son Tobia (with Fabio Lombardo), also an architect.

The Brion Tomb is a family cemetery, made by the beautiful mind of Carlo Scarpa, who here expresses himself with freedom of means and languages in an extraordinary virtuosity, synthesis and climax of his culture and experience connected to his sensibility and vision. Carlo Scarpa has given the shape and atmosphere of a large garden open to everyone, creating a place of silence, peace and harmony, pervaded by a deep sense of the sacred, where different cultures and religions blend together through architectures dense with sophisticated symbols and hidden references, in order to invite all visitors to a universal meditation on life and death with a memorable, unique and engaging experience.