INTRODUCTION

Villa La Rotonda is a Renaissance villa just outside Vicenza, northern Italy, designed by Andrea Palladio. The proper name is Villa Almerico Capra, but it is also known as La Rotonda, Villa Rotonda, Villa Capra and Villa Almerico. The name "Capra" derives from the Capra brothers, who completed the building after it was ceded to them in 1592. Along with other works by Palladio, the building is conserved as part of the World Heritage Site "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto".

 Situated on the top of a hill just outside the town of Vicenza, the Villa Capra is called the Villa Rotonda, because of its completely symmetrical plan with a central circular hall. The building has a square plan with loggias on all four sides, which connect to terraces and the landscape. At the center of the plan, the two story circular hall with overlooking balconies was intended by Palladio to be roofed by a semicircular dome. However, after his death, a lower dome was built, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi and modeled after the Pantheon with a central oculus originally open to the sky. The proportions of the rooms are mathematically precise, according to the rules Palladio describes in the Quatro Libri.

 The building is rotated 45 degrees to south on the hilltop, enabling all rooms to receive some sunshine. The villa is asymmetrically sited in the topography, and each loggia, although identical in design, relates to the landscape it enfronts differently through variations of wide steps, retaining walls and embankments. Thus, the symmetrical architecture in asymmetrical relationship to the landscape intensifies the experience of the hilltop. The northwest loggia is set recessed into the hill above an axial entry from the front gate. This axis is flanked by a service building and continues visually to a chapel at the edge of the town, thus connecting villa and town. JY

INSPIRATION
In 1565 a priest, Paolo Almerico, on his retirement from the Vatican (as referendario apostolico of Pope Pius IV and afterwards Pius V), decided to return to his home town of Vicenza in the Venetian countryside and build a country house. This house, later known as 'La Rotonda', was to be one of Palladio's best-known legacies to the architectural world. Villa Capra may have inspired a thousand subsequent buildings, but the villa was itself inspired by the Pantheon in Rome.

DESIGN
The site selected was a hilltop just outside the city of Vicenza. Unlike some other Palladian villas, the building was not designed from the start to accommodate a working farm. This sophisticated building was designed for a site which was, in modern terminology, "suburban". Palladio classed the building as a "palazzo" rather than a villa.

 The design is for a completely symmetrical building having a square plan with four facades, each of which has a projecting portico. The whole is contained within an imaginary circle which touches each corner of the building and centres of the porticos. (illustration, left). The name La Rotonda refers to the central circular hall with its dome. To describe the villa, as a whole, as a 'rotonda' is technically incorrect, as the building is not circular but rather the intersection of a square with a cross. Each portico has steps leading up, and opens via a small cabinet or corridor to the circular domed central hall. This and all other rooms were proportioned with mathematical precision according to Palladio's own rules of architecture which he published in the Quattro Libri dell'Architettura.[1]

 The design reflected the humanist values of Renaissance architecture. In order for each room to have some sun, the design was rotated 45 degrees from each cardinal point of the compass. Each of the four porticos has pediments graced by statues of classical deities. The pediments were each supported by six Ionic columns. Each portico was flanked by a single window. All principal rooms were on the second floor or piano nobile.

 Building began in 1567. Neither Palladio nor the owner, Paolo Almerico, were to see the completion of the villa. Palladio died in 1580 and a second architect, Vincenzo Scamozzi, was employed by the new owners to oversee the completion. One of the major changes he made to the original plan was to modify the two-storey centre hall. Palladio had intended it to be covered by a high semi-circular dome but Scamozzi designed a lower dome with an oculus (intended to be open to the sky) inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. The dome was ultimately completed with a cupola.

 The interior design of the Villa was to be as wonderful, if not more so, than the exterior. Alessandro and Giovanni Battista Maganza and Anselmo Canera were commissioned to paint frescoes in the principal salons. Among the four principal salons on the piano nobile are the West Salon (also called the Holy Room, because of the religious nature of its frescoes and ceiling), and the East Salon, which contains an allegorical life story of the first owner Paolo Almerico, his many admirable qualities portrayed in fresco.

 The highlight of the interior is the central, circular hall, surrounded by a balcony and covered by the domed ceiling; it soars the full height of the main house up to the cupola, with walls decorated in trompe l'oeil. Abundant frescoes create an atmosphere that is more reminiscent of a cathedral than the principal salon of a country house.

LANDSCAPE
From the porticos wonderful views of the surrounding countryside can be seen; this is no coincidence as the Villa was designed to be in perfect harmony with the landscape. This was in complete contrast to such buildings as Villa Farnese of just 16 years earlier. Thus, while the house appears to be completely symmetrical, it actually has certain deviations, designed to allow each facade to complement the surrounding landscape and topography. In this way, the symmetry of the architecture allows for the asymmetry of the landscape, and creates a seemingly symmetrical whole. The landscape is a panoramic vision of trees and meadows and woods, with the distant Vicenza on the horizon.

 The northwest portico is set onto the hill as the termination of a straight carriage drive from the principal gates. This carriageway is an avenue between the service blocks, built by the Capra brothers who acquired the villa in 1591; they commissioned Vincenzo Scamozzi to complete the villa and construct the range of staff and agricultural buildings. As one approaches the villa from this angle one is deliberately made to feel one is ascending from some less worthy place to a temple on high. This same view in reverse, from the villa, highlights a classical chapel on the edge of Vicenza, thus villa and town are united.

PARAMETER
In Rotonda, Palladio harmonizes nature and proportions of the calculation of the town, which gets a real masterpiece, with its four elegant peristilos access jnicos us back to pure classicism. The height and length of the building are well defined by a system that derives from Alberti proportion, and ultimately Vitrubio. This combination of square (plant) and circle (dome) is characteristic of the Renaissance, but the end result is obtained thanks to the arcades, the shape of a Greek cross. The entire building reflects symmetry, perfection, harmony, ultimately, the parameters of the Renaissance.

SPACES
The house stands on top of a hill on a base, leaving the basement to the kitchen and administration. This is a new type of building designed with criteria of absolute simplicity and symmetry. In this town, Palladio implemented the concept of classical villa built as a centralized plant. Body building is a cube that fits inside a circular room, roundabout, around which are grouped the different runs. In each of the faces of the cube stands a portico portico of Ionic and with a broad front, which gives the plant contained a Greek cross.

 Terrace and bedrooms

On the terrace, which rises four monumental stairs oriented to each of the cardinal points, the house stands a square, which is sleeping in the corners and the center cover a large circular room with a large dome.

Tickets
Each of the four entrances leading, through a short hallway, the main room of the piano man, a circular hall, whose diameter is equivalent to the width of the gate, covered by a dome made based rings superimposed.

 Steps
The four steps with their corresponding Ionic colonnade, which hold two triangular gables, decorated with sculptures and Lorenzo Rubini, clearly inspired by the classical facades of the temples, which in this case would be hexstilas. This is a new aspect, as it gives a house treating a religious building, the first time that a dome is used for a building that is not religious. The broad steps, bounded by side walls, leading to the gates that stand in the bucket. A narrow hallway leads vaulted from each of the chambers, the central circular space, whose diameter is equivalent to the width of the gate.

 porches
The portico of Ionic volutes with their lateral move from vertical to horizontal columns of the base of the cornice and pediment. In the front, framed by a strong cornice are two oval windows, which flank the shield. Central Board
The center of the hall marks the figure of a lion's head embedded in the ground, in the middle of a circle with red and white radio. The central room is covered with a great hemispherical dome. The layout of the plant outside the hearing show are completely symmetrical and a perfect match, the four walls are the same, have exactly the same proportions and remind the temples of classical antiquity with a staircase and an Ionic peristyle.

MATERIALS
Coated brick and stone were used for most construction. Palladio's villas were built with the work of stucco-covered brick, most of the elements, including columns, were of such material. The stone was reserved for the finest details, such as bases and capitals of columns and frames of windows or garrisons. Used in stucco floors Villa Rotonda. Surfaces like those Venetian stucco as lovers of color, you change it at will. Palladian villas in the Venetian and houses are large numbers of overlays coated.

 On the podium of the walls of the stairs appear Lorenzo Rubini sculptures representing various classical deities. As supporting evidence, the dome of the stucco and ceilings are the work of Augusto Rubino, Ruggiero Bascape and Domenico Fontana, and the frescoes of the dome are made by Alessandro Maganza.

CURRENT CONDITION
In 1994 UNESCO designated the building as part of a World Heritage Site.[2] The late owner of the villa was Mario di Valmarana ( Oct. 13, 2010), a former professor of architecture at the University of Virginia.[3] It was his declared ambition to preserve Villa Rotonda so that it may be appreciated by future generations. The interior is open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays, except during the winter months, and the grounds are open every day.

Palladio's plan of Villa La Rotonda, in I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura 1570.