19 Villa Gazzotti

Andrea Palladio designed the villa for Taddeo Gazzoti between 1542 and 1543. Taddeo was not noble by birth, but was an educated man and, together with Giangiorgio Trissino, a promoter of the city's architectural renewal. Gazzotti was forced to sell the villa, while still under construction, to the Venetian patrician Girolamo Grimani, who completed the works in a few years' time.
In designing the villa, Palladio needed to create an updated, coherent whole out of a house with a pre-existing tower, which was mentioned in the documents and is still clearly visible on the right-hand side of the completed building. He constructed a second tower on the opposite side of the plan, thereby creating two symmetrical apartments with three rooms each. A barrel-vaulted loggia joins the apartments to the cross-vaulted great hall.

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