Vicenza, altitude 30 m/100 feet above sea level; train station at Vicenza 2 km/1.5 miles to the north.
The most famous villa of Palladio is located at the southern edge of Vicenza, and can be reached from the statale [state road] to Este and from the Riviera Berica bike route.
Started between 1550 and 1570 (the exact date is not known) the villa was commissioned by Paolo Almerico, Cardinal of Vicenza; with Palladio’s death in 1580 it was still incomplete and lacking a roof cover, which was completed in 1585 by Vincenzo Scamozzi, with a rotund dome; and thus the name Rotunda became associated with the entire structure, further emphasized by the centralized symmetry that characterizes the floor plan: the four elevations are virtually identical, each with a pronaos [portico] with six columns (a motif used again, although not on all four sides, at Villa Molin at Padua and at Villa Foscari at Malcontenta).
