Gianluca & Federica

Villa Selvatico sits on top of the hill of Sant’Elena, in Battaglia Terme, at the foot of the Euganean Hills near Padua. The villa was built between the late sixteenth and the mid seventeenth century by the Selvatico family; in the nineteenth century Giuseppe Jappelli turned its Italian garden into a romantic English-style park that slopes down towards the spa.

For a photographer it is a vertical venue: the grand staircase, the terraces, a park that changes at every bend of the path and, from the top, the view over the plain and the hills. The afternoon light comes in from the side and carries the portraits without having to look for it.

Gianluca and Federica’s 152 photographs tell the whole day. A few minutes away, also in Battaglia Terme, stands the Castello del Catajo, where I have photographed two other weddings: Padua and the Euganean Hills are an area I know well.