18 Villa Almerico Capra detta "La Rotonda"

The universal icon of Palladian villas, the Rotonda was considered by its owner, the canon Paolo Almerico, an urban residence or, more appropriately, a suburban home. In the Quattro Libri, Palladio himself included the Rotonda amongst his palazzi and not the villas. It was designed in 1566 and, although incomplete, the villa was ready for use by 1569. In 1591 it was ceded to the brothers Odorico and Marco Capra, who carried it through to completion. Scamozzi, who succeeded Palladio after 1580, completed the plans with some deviations, which recent studies however tend to consider very limited.
The Villa Rotonda is a villa-temple, an abstraction, mirroring a higher order and harmony. With its corners oriented to the four compass points, it is primarily meant to be read in terms of its volumes – a cube and a sphere – almost alluding to the primary solids in Plato's universe. There were certainly several sources for such a centrally planned residential building: from the projects by Francesco di Giorgio to Mantegna's house in Mantua and Raphael's project for the Villa Madama. The fact remains that the Villa Rotonda is unique in the architecture of all time. By building a self-contained villa, perfectly symmetrical, Palladio almost seems to have been bent on constructing an ideal model of his own architecture

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