Villa Valmarana

Vigardolo, Italy

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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Villa Valmarana, a Palladian villa at Vigardolo near Monticello Conte Otto in the province of Vicenza, was built during the 1540s as one of Andrea Palladio's earliest commissions. Designed to house two branches of the Valmarana family simultaneously, the villa's room layout reflects Palladio's accommodation of two separate nuclear families within a single structure. The architect's design draws evident influence from ancient Roman buildings, informed by Palladio's first visit to Rome in 1541. The villa retains sixteenth-century frescoes applied during its original occupation. Now recognized as part of UNESCO's 1996 World Heritage Site designation for the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, the building remains one of the earliest surviving examples of Palladio's architectural achievement, its attribution confirmed by an extant drawing by the architect himself.