The Palladian villas
Twenty-four villas in the middle of the fields, and half of western architecture descending from them.
Andrea Palladio was born in Padua in 1508 and worked almost only in the Veneto. In the sixteenth century the Venetian patricians began buying land on the mainland and needed houses that were at once farms and residences of display: from that demand the villas were born, with the inhabited central block and the side barchesse that served as barns and stables.
The Palladian villas number twenty-four and have been a Unesco site since 1996, together with the city of Vicenza. They are not in one place: they are scattered across the provinces of Vicenza, Treviso, Padua and Venice, nearly always in the country, and are visited on separate tickets with different opening hours.
Which to see
The Rotonda, just outside Vicenza, is the best known and the most copied in the world: a square plan, a dome at the centre and four identical fronts with their porticoes. Villa Barbaro at Maser has frescoes by Paolo Veronese and a fish pond still in use. Villa Foscari on the Brenta riviera, which they call the Malcontenta, faces the water; villa Emo at Fanzolo is the most agricultural of them all.
How to plan it
In one day you can see three or four, because they are close together but out in the country and you need a car. The classic round is Vicenza, the Rotonda and villa Valmarana ai Nani in the morning, Maser and the hills of Asolo in the afternoon. The Brenta villas are done instead from Padua or Venice, by boat if you like.
Opening hours are limited and change with the season: many open only a few days a week and some only by appointment. That is the thing to check before getting in the car.