John Hooper in Rome Friday June 3, 2005 The Prince of Wales was caught in a row in Italy yesterday after a charity of which he is patron helped block a 1bn (680m) government-backed motorway. Work on the extension of the A31 which runs down to Vicenza from the foothills of the Alps, began in February and is due to be completed in 2010. It would cut through a Unesco-nominated world heritage site and pass some of Italy's finest historical villas west of Venice. But on Tuesday, a court in Venice upheld an appeal against the project by the prince's Landmark Trust, among others. The court said Silvio Berlusconi's government had failed to respect environmental safeguards on the Valdastico Sud extension in the Veneto region and the decision to press ahead was "verging on the arbitrary". The governor of Veneto, Giancarlo Galan, a member of Mr Berlusconi's Forza Italia party, said in an apparent reference to the Landmark Trust, that "an English pseudo foundation" had acted "with colonialist haughtiness". Peter Pearce, the trust's director, said it had tried to establish whether the law for the approval of a major public work had been properly carried through. "This decision ... demonstrates it was not," he said. The proposed 35-mile motorway was designed to alleviate congestion in the industrial west of Venice. Its route would take it through the foot of the Berici hills, and past historic buildings including several villas designed by the 16th century architect Andrea Palladio. One of the villas, Villa Saracena, is owned by the trust which Mr Pearce said the trust had spent "five years restoring". The lawyers for the objectors said: "An arbitrary and unjustified government decision does not suffice for the ... disfiguring of mankind's treasures". A junior environment minister, Stefano Stefani, said: "We all want to defend the environment, but we must also guarantee opportunities for development to our companies."