Villa Rotunda
Introduction
Villa Capra (also known as La Rotonda, Villa la Rotonda, Villa Almerico-Capra or Villa Capra-Valmarana) is a central-plan country palace designed by Andrea Palladio and built from the year 1566 on the outskirts of the city of Vicenza in Italy.
The name Capra derives from the surname of two brothers who completed the building when it was given to them in 1591. The most famous villa of Palladio and probably of all Venetian villas, the Rotunda is one of the most celebrated buildings in the history of architecture in the modern era.[1].
Inspiration
When the priest hb
and Count Paolo Almerico retired in 1565 from the Roman Curia after having been apostolic vicar of Popes Pius IV and Pius V and decided to return to his hometown of Vicenza and build a country residence, he could not have imagined that the house he commissioned from the architect Andrea Palladio would become one of the most studied and imitated architectural prototypes during the next five centuries. Although Villa Capra has served as inspiration for thousands of buildings, it itself is undoubtedly inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. Over the course of his life, Palladio designed more than twenty villas in the Venetian region. This residence, later known as "La Rotonda", would become one of the most famous legacies to the world of architecture:.
Project
The site chosen was the rounded top of a small hill just outside the walls of Vicenza. At that time, the fascination with archaic values began to encourage many wealthy nobles to mix with the joy of simple life.
Being celibate, the prelate Almerico had no need for a grand palazzo, but he wanted a sophisticated villa, which was exactly what Palladio devised for him; a suburban residence with a social image, but also a quiet refuge for meditation and study. Isolated on the top of the hill, this kind of peculiar temple-village originally lacked agricultural annexes. Its author included it significantly within the list of palazzi, not villas, in his treatise "The Four Books of Architecture", published in 1570.
The construction, begun in 1566, consists of a square building, completely symmetrical and inscribed in a perfect circle (see plan). However, describing the villa as "Rotonda" (round) is technically incorrect, since the plan of the building is not circular, but can be defined as the superposition of a square and a cross. Each of the four facades presents an advanced volume with a "Gallery (architecture)") gallery (loggia) accessed by wide external stairs.