Villa Rotonda

Timeline

1. 1566–1567Hills southeast of Vicenza · VicenzaIn 1566 Palladio designed for the returning cleric Paolo Almerico a country house open on all four sides: a cubic mass, a central rotunda, a dome, and four identical Ionic porticoes facing the surrounding landscape. It was not a working farm but a villa-temple overlooking Vicenza and the Prealps, its inspiration often traced to the Roman Pantheon and Vitruvian centralized plans.
2. 1569–1570Villa Rotonda · VicenzaBy about 1569 the villa's main body was habitable, though the dome, interiors, and some portico details were still missing. In 1570 Palladio published the plans and elevations in the Four Books of Architecture, disseminating it as an ideal palazzo model. The four-portico symmetry and hilltop siting allowed this country house in turn to define the landscape order of Vicenza's outskirts.
3. 1580–1605Villa Rotonda · VicenzaNeither Palladio nor Almerico saw the final completion. After Almerico died around 1589, the villa passed around 1591 to Odoardo and Marco Capra. Scamozzi made limited changes to the dome and interiors, making the hilltop villa a complete habitable building at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and as a Palladian prototype it influenced later European country houses.