Villa La Rotonda Historical Timeline

Origins

Paolo Almerico, a retired papal official, commissioned it around 1566 as a place to withdraw to on returning home to Vicenza. Unusually for a Palladian villa it was never a working farm -- there are no barns, no granaries, no agricultural wings. It was built purely to be lived in and looked out from.

Turning points

Palladio died in 1580 with the villa unfinished. Vincenzo Scamozzi completed it for the Capra brothers, who bought it in 1591; the shallower dome as built is his change from Palladio's intended hemisphere.

Influential people

Palladio published it in I quattro libri dell'architettura in 1570, before it was finished, which is how the design reached architects who would never see it.

Cultural evolution

Inigo Jones took the idea to England; Lord Burlington built Chiswick House from it; Thomas Jefferson worked from the same plates. Government buildings on four continents descend from this one house.

Present-day significance

Still privately owned by the Valmarana family, who live in it, and inscribed by UNESCO in 1994. Its limited opening hours are a consequence of that -- it is a home first.