I recently visited Italy on a trip with my family. Among our travels, we visited Vicenza, a jewel of the Veneto and a city shaped by 16th-century architect Andre Palladio. Two buildings projected forth in our experience: the celebrated Villa Rotonda and Palladio’s earlier project, the Basilica Palladian. These projects provided me with insight into Palladio’s drive towards the ideal, exemplified in the Villa, while revealing a rich negotiation between the ideal and the imperfect reality of city-making in the earlier Basilica. The area is 4km^2.

In designing the Villa Rotonda, Palladio made a strikingly clear decision, setting the building perfectly at 45 degrees from north; the precise geometry conspicuous when viewing the aerial photograph (01). This move converts the building into something of a diamond, favouring a cardinal, absolute orientation over the given geometry of the site boundary. Where a conventional approach may favour a southern orientation to admit winter sun while shading higher-level summer sun through projecting eaves, Palladio’s decision meant that every façade received sun. This confers a certain equity across the facades, the daylighting equivalent of the plan geometry, consistent in all orientations. It is a sunbaker, orienting itself towards the sun to gain a uniform tan; a sundial, with each façade registering the evolving lighting conditions across the day – the sedimentary quality of Palladio’s stone and plaster surfaces holding the colours of the day from golden light when in sun and transitioning to a blue tone in shade.

The perfectly symmetrical form yields a surprising variety of landscape conditions. To the north, an open lawn provides a clear presentation of the building on approach, while ensuring that afternoon sun to the primary facade is unobstructed by treescape (05). To the south, thicker vegetation is present, shading the setting and creating contrast. The space has a contained quality, with dwelling walls to two sides and retaining structure to the two others.

While familiar imagery presents the Villa as a building in the round, set among gradually sloping lawns at the crest of a hill, the reality is that the siting required dramatic transformation of the topography.

As we enjoyed the city of Vicenza, experience of a second building offered further understanding and surprise; the glorious Basilica Palladiana (10), the centrepiece building of the town, somehow absent from my university studies. The Basilica was Palladio’s first public project, commenced in 1546, some nineteen years prior to commencement of the Villa Rotonda and only eight years into his architectural career.