The small chapel of San Giovanni Battista Decollato [St. John the Beheaded] in Palù was built for the Lazara family in the sixteenth century; in 1413 Nicolò II Lazara, the lieutenant of the Venetian Republic in Conselve, had bought the gastaldia [stewardship] of Palù from the Zabarella family. Building on the site only got underway around the middle of the sixteenth century, with the creation of a lordly villa (complete with defensive tower) that served as a country retreat for the family and as the permanent residence of their steward. A few years later, in 1574, Giovanni IV Lazara began work on the construction of a small chapel with a monastery and hospice, which were to be run by the Augustinian Friars Eremite of Padua.
The work to extend this complex was then undertaken in 1634, and resulted in the present roof and facade, and the addition of a burial chapel with an altar and cupola.
The interior of this was decorated with frescoes of eight saints by Luca Ferrari and Lorenzo Bedogni, two artists from the Emilia region who were much appreciated by the nobility of seventeenth-century Padua. The last work occurred in the eighteenth century, when the monastery was suppressed, a chapel to Sant’Eurosia was created and the previous altars were replaced. The chapel has now returned to its former splendour after major restoration work in 2006.
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