Villa Badoer Site Features

The portico is an Ionic temple front reached by a broad flight of steps, set on a raised platform above ground that floods — a practical response to the Polesine, and one that also gives the building its command of the approach.

The curved barchesse are the innovation. Palladio had used straight service wings before; here they bend forward in quadrant colonnades, gathering the forecourt into the composition so that working farm buildings become the architecture rather than an appendage to it.

Inside, the main rooms carry grotesque decoration by Giallo Fiorentino.

The house stands on a raised podium, reached by a broad flight of steps, under a six-column Ionic portico and pediment — the Roman temple front applied whole and without apology. The platform is a practical answer to ground that floods, and it also gives the building its command of the approach.

What makes this the one to see is the pair of curved colonnades sweeping forward from either side to enclose the forecourt. Palladio's barchesse — the working wings that housed carts, tools and grain — are normally straight runs. Here they bend, and the courtyard they frame works the way a small piazza does. It is the first time he built the idea, and the clearest.

Approach from the front rather than the car park if you can. The composition was designed to be met head-on, and the curve only does its work from there.

Fratta Polesine sits in the Polesine, the low flat country between the Adige and the Po, much of it at or barely above sea level and kept dry by embankments and drainage.

That is why the villa stands on a raised platform: the ground floods, and Palladio's solution to a practical problem is also what gives the building its command of the approach. The same landscape runs east to the Po Delta.