429. Andrea Palladio,
Villa Rotonda, Vicenza, 1556-1571 (Italy)

Most famous of all Palladio’s villas, this hilltop retreat—more properly known as the Villa Almerico-Capra—was built for a retired priest, who used it for rural entertaining. Palladio famously set an identical pedimented temple front on all four façades of the main block, the better, he said, to frame the extensive views on every side. The architect was mistakenly convinced that such porticoes formed part of the Roman villas described by Cicero or Pliny, though in Antiquity their use was in fact limited largely to temples. The façades are rotated 45 degrees from the cardinal directions in order to allow some sun to each. The plan of the villa is square, with a bilaterally symmetrical distribution of rooms and a tall rotunda over the central hall. After Palladio’s death the house was finished by his pupil Scamozzi; at this time the intended dome was completed as a smaller cupola. Like most of Palladio’s buildings, the construction is inexpensive, mainly brick and plaster, but the precision of his proportioning outweighs such considerations. The house influenced countless architects in the following centuries, almost all of whom would have known about it only through the woodcut illustrations in Palladio’s Four Books of Architecture (1570). It is still privately owned, though open to the public.