Villa La Rotonda

Villa Almerico Capra, known everywhere as La Rotonda, stands on a low hill just outside Vicenza: a perfectly symmetrical house with four identical temple porticoes, one on each side, around a domed circular hall. It is the most imitated private building in the world, and the direct ancestor of Chiswick House, Monticello and a great many others.

This is a family home that opens to visitors, not a museum that happens to be privately held. The restricted days are real domestic constraints, and turning up outside them achieves nothing.

Paying for the interior as well as the grounds matters more here than at a state museum: private maintenance of a UNESCO building is funded almost entirely by those tickets.

The approach is through working farmland; stay on the marked path rather than cutting across the fields.

Privately owned and open on a restricted calendar: the grounds are open more days than the interior, and the interior only on certain days and months. Check the villa's own schedule before travelling -- this is the single most common disappointment for visitors to Vicenza.

Separate tickets for grounds and interior. City bus 8 stops nearby; on foot it is a pleasant twenty-five minutes uphill from the centre.