«Loggias have been made on all four walls: beneath this floor, and the one of the living space lie the rooms made for comfort. This space is located in the centre of the room and projects the light from above. The fitting rooms are mezzanine. Above the larger rooms, which have high volts in relation to the second floor, there is space to walk up to 15 feet and a half». Palladium, The Four Books of Architecture

The same Andrea Palladio will talk about his project the rotonda in his second book of the ‘Quattro libri dell'Architettura, published in 1570: The home of Paolo Almerico is not one of the villas like as one would expect, but one of the many buildings due to its proximity to the city. The noble Vincentine commissioned the architect to create a place for his “pleasure craft”, a building that combined the housing needs with representative duties, a place which would unite would spend his last years between humanistic idleness and holy agriculture.

The choice of the location is fundamental: and just about a quarter of a mile from the city walls, the hill in which la rotonda stands on is guaranteed to have the most wholesome atmosphere in the whole aria, so much that it is extremely popular with the towns nobles; the square plan of the villa was rotated 45 degrees with the angles orientated towards the four cardinal points in order to accommodate the beautiful nature which really exposes the villas beauty due to the sunlight and winds which render the overall experience unforgettable.

The humanistic recovery of antiquity is one of the many unique features in the rotonda’s design: the same idea of a circular building with a dime is derived from the pantheon of Rome, the pronai with tympanum and columns are inspired by ancient temples, while the concept of a suburban Villa combined with the function of an agricultural help to rework the latin writings of ‘plinio il giovane’. Because, contrary to what it seems , the rotonda was also a centre for the management of fields: Inside its walls lived the owner, Paolo Almerico, who from the start had complete visual control of his land, unlike other ventian villas the rustic outside of the rotonda was far from the main body of the building.

The villa appeared isolated without any walls or hedges to protect it. What makes the rotonda so unique is the silhouette of perfection and harmony which makes it stand out, its indissoluble and osmic nature allowed palladio to create a captivating landscape.

The building is on three floors, plus a mezzanine: on the ground floor it is accessed from the garden through a passageway turned under the external steps; the upper floors are reached via four spiral staircases built in the corners of the square where the central hall is inscribed, which serve as supporting pillars for the height of the villa.

The ground floor was used as service areas, like the kitchen that still exists. The ceilings are low and are marked by cross vaults; the circular space in the centre is exactly in line with the lantern that crowns the dome: in this precise point there is the perforated stone mak, which connects the ground floor with the noble floor and which was to serve as the Rotond’s cooling system in the summer months.

The noble floor is the level which represents the building, its high ceilings decorated with frescoes and stuccos. It is accessed from the four steps of the pronai: the widths of these, if prolonged through the main body emulate a greek cross inside the square plan where the central room is inscribed at the intersection point. There are four rectangular corner rooms that communicate with these and lead to spiral staircases; the central high, on the other hand comes from the four corridors which all have an unequal width. This starts directly from the entrances of the loggias.

The small internal spiral staircases also serve as a mezzanine composed of four small rooms placed above the dressing rooms of the noble floor, which are lit by the small windows located below the gables. The attic, which originally had no internal subdivisions was mainly used for storage functions for agricultural commodities. This had been recognised by Francesco Muttoni during an intervention between 1725-1740; it is illuminated by sixteen small windows in the attic and overlooks the central hall with a narrow circular balcony.

The whole composition of the villa revolves around the fulcrum of the central circular room which has given la rotonda its name. It compromises the noble floor and the attic up until the dome vault which is terminated by a lantern.

The external dome, completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi, is very different from the one designed by palladio in the “quattro libri”, although paladio shows it as a perfectly hemispherical dome, which would have the building very slender, today it resembles a lowered dome on a drum similar to the cover of the Pantheon in Rome. like this, at the top there is an oculus that, instead of being left open, was crowned by a lantern which is diffused by light filters.

In line with the lantern, a grotesque low-relief face appears on the floor of the hall. Moreover the holes that cross it allow the fresh air of the floor below to rise to the noble floor, therefore refreshing the villa during the hottest months.

The plan is based on the intersection of simple geometric shapes, the circle and the square: these two figures determine all of the reports based on proportion. The base module is the square in which the circle of the central room is inscribed;la plan of the main body consists of four modules, each loggia that has a flight of stairs is a module. Furthermore if elevated, the facade and the shape of a harmonic rectangle whose height (from the garden to the roof) is obtained by tracing a 30 degree angle on the width of the large square plan.

The rotonda refers to arithmetic relationships that can also be found in music; still, the arrangement of the columns, six for each pronaos, follows the rules of the beautiful proportion given by vitruvius and taken up by Palladio in the projects of his villas: the intercolumns measure two column diameters and a quarter, just like an ancient so-called eustilo temple.

The circle and the square, these are the archetypal shapes from which the villas geometric shapes are developed and perfected, symbolizing the skye and the earth, defined by palladio as “the most beautiful and the most regulated”. The rotonda therefore has become a microcosm regulated by universal laws, a mirror of the celestial harmony at the center of which, according to the anthropocentric conception of the renaissance, there is Man.

The way in which the light enters the rotonda and eliminates the external volumes, is another example of how palladio had thought of every little detail. The angle of the square of the villa points towards the four cardinal points, ensuring that throughout the day the side facing south east and south west each have equal time for the sun to shine on them. Even during winter these two sides of the building are equally lit by the sun. passing from 20 degrees to 0 degrees, the first of the hours 7.30-9.30, the second of the hours 15.00-16.30.

During the summer solstice the rays enter the villa with an inclination of 59 degrees, at the equinoxes of 27 degrees, at the winter solstice of 9 degrees. From here it can be deducted that, if in the summer the sun has a rather vertical angle of incidence, the inside of the rotonda remains more shaded and therefore fresh; on the contrary the very low winter sun enters with its long rays, at times passing through the entire width of the noble floor.