Palladio at its most perfect

Is it Andrea Palladio's masterpiece?

"Perhaps architecture has never reached such a level of magnificence” said J.W. Goethe after visiting the Rotonda. And he was right.

La Rotonda is probably the closest Palladio came to creating architecture as an ideal project, the sublime connection between an idea, an architectural concept and a building.

What makes it extraordinary is the almost mathematical clarity of the original idea. The house is square, not round, not really a "rotonda" but the symmetry of the four facades and the circular domed hall at the centre, paired with the four identical classical "temple" porticoes facing close to the four cardinal points, allow the name, or nickname, to be pertinent.

But Palladio's genius isn't solely in the resulting symmetry: the house is placed on a hill, with four different points of view so that each portico becomes a frame for a different view of the surrounding landscape. There's no conventional front or a back, if faces you straight from every side, it surveys the countryside in every direction: serene, intellectual, and almost impossibly balanced.

Facing the countryside is a trademark of Palladio's private commissions from wealthy landowners, designed to ensure the flow of work of a luxurious farm building, something we can talk about in future chapters: the invention of the "Barchessa", the best expressions of which you can see in Villa Barbaro, at Maser and Villa Emo at Fanzolo.

If you are interested in pure architectural beauty, though, La Rotonda is the one you should travel to the Veneto specifically to see. Its enormous influence on later European and American architecture makes much more sense once you see how radically simple the underlying idea is.

Visit all these amazing places can be arranged when you stay at Villa San Bastiano Fogazzaro. See you there!