Villa Rotonda

La Rotonda is a country house or villa built by Andrea Palladio on the top of a hill near Vicenza for the retired Vatican official Paolo Almerico. After the transfer in 1591 to the ownership of the Capra brothers, Villa Almerico was renamed Villa Capra . Sometimes it is called Villa Almerico Capra .

Villa Rotonda in Vicenza.

Villa Rotonda, which is under the protection of UNESCO as a World Heritage Site , is universally recognized as one of the central buildings in the history of European architecture. For Palladian architects, this was the most revered example of a manor house. Thousands of buildings around the world were built in his image and likeness - from the American estate of Monticchiel to St. Sophia Cathedral in Tsarskoye Selo.

Villa Kapra is one of the first private houses in history, decided in the form of an ancient temple. The building is characterized by perfect symmetry based on carefully calculated mathematical proportions. The villa has four identical facades with ionic porticoes leading to them on a balustrade with statues of ancient gods. Among the first repetitions of the villa outside of Italy belonged to the estates of English aristocrats - Cheesic House and Mereworth Castle .

The facade of the villa.

Vincenzo Scamozzi , who was responsible for the completion and decoration of the villa after the death of Palladio, crowned it with a dome- rotunda like the Roman Pantheon . From the circular hole on top of the dome , according to the creators, the sunlight was supposed to pour into the round living room in the center of the building. Its walls are covered with elaborate frescoes- tricks . All other rooms are designed so that the sun peeks in evenly throughout the day.

Unlike many architectural monuments of the Renaissance , which tacitly contrast themselves with the surrounding landscape, the villa is perfectly inscribed in it. From the front gate to it leads a wide alley for the crews. Palladio and Scamozzi achieved harmony in this work with nature, unknown to European architecture since antiquity.

The last known owner of the monument was Mario di Valmarana (d. 2011), a member of the Italian family Valmarana, a retired professor of architecture at the University of Virginia . It is interesting that the main building of this university (the so-called Rotunda) was designed by Thomas Jefferson on the model of the Rotunda villa. The influence of this Palladium masterpiece also marked the non-embodied design of the presidential palace in Washington , which was developed by Jefferson.

UNESCO World Heritage Site No. 712 Russian • English • fr.