Once it fulfilled its function as a defensive tower, it was rented, bought, and sold by various
historical figures who made various uses of it. In 1654 the Tower and the land surrounding it was purchased by the Canal di S. Barnaba family, an ancient Venetian lineage. A member of this illustrious family is credited with an atrocious crime: the killing of his pregnant wife with her fifth child. This fact of blood, which perhaps did not take place in the tower, however, gave the structure the dismal epithet of “Devil’s Tower”. In 1813 the land was sold by the Canal family to the lawyer Antonio Piazza who also rented the land further north with a vegetable garden and vineyard. This is how the great dream of this lover of history came true: the Tower and the Bastion became a privileged place for the collection of ancient inscriptions, paintings, finds and statues that must have remembered the great garden of the mythical Arcadia. In 1909 the area became the property of Monsignor Luigi Pellizzo, journalist, and founder of the Difesa del Popolo until after the First World War when it passed to the company Egidio Forcellini and then was bought by the municipality of Padua in 1938 and sold, in a few months, to the Montesi Sgaravatti family who had their residence built there based on a design by the rationalist architect Francesco Mansutti.