I can't restrain myself from upload another Palladio's Villa. Villa Capra "La Rotonda" is a Renaissance villa just outside Vicenza, northern Italy, designed by Andrea Palladio. The correct name is Villa Almerico-Capra. It is also known as La Rotonda, Villa Rotunda, and Villa Almerico. In 1565 a priest, Paolo Almerico, on his retirement from the Vatican, decided to return to his home town of Vicenza in the Venetian countryside and build a country house. The name "Capra" derives from the Capra brothers, who completed the building after it was ceded to them in 1591. 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 "Quattro Libri dell'Architettura". 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. The interior design of the Villa was to be as wonderful as the exterior. Alessandro and Giovanni Battista Maganza and Anselmo Canera were commissioned to paint frescoes in the principal salons. 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. Villa Capra may have inspired a thousand subsequent buildings, but the villa was itself inspired by the Pantheon in Rome. For the competition to design the President's House in Washington, DC, Thomas Jefferson anonymously submitted a design that was a variation on the Villa Rotunda. Though James Hoban's Palladian design for what would become known as the White House was selected, the influence of the Villa Rotunda can also been seen at Jefferson's own iconic home of Monticello. Like other works by Palladio in Vicenza and the surrounding area, the building is conserved as part of the World Heritage Site "City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto". The Villa is still inhabited. DAZ: M3; Noggin; Naval Uniform Set; DAZ: Fantasy Book; Moyra: Bal a Versailles; RDNA: Render Studio for Poser; lupadgds: Old Table (free stuff); zorglub: lantern (free stuff); Background: Villa Capra La Rotonda (photo by myself). Thank you for viewing and drop a note if you like!