My first project in Venice , and at the time my first church facade. It wasn't a coincidence. In the Christian circles of Vicenza everyone knew of my closeness to circles smelling of heresy. Many of my clients did not hide, or barely hid, the sharing of new ideas coming from beyond the Alps through our business channels. In Venice everything started again, thanks to Marcantonio and Daniele Barbaro , patriarch of Aquileia "in condominium with the Grimani" (but that's another s

Listen, as if it were Andrea Palladio telling... Gianfrancesco Valmarana was the brother of Giovanni Alvise , among the first great men who believed in me, for whose family I designed the Palazzo al Pozzo Rosso a couple of years later. The Valmaranas had long owned a large fiefdom in Lisiera, which was being completely reorganized at that time. I was obviously involved, in particular in the reconstruction of the villa, which resembled when I saw it Villa Trissino in Cricoli, 

The only palace of mine that I was able to see finished was the one for Count Montano Barbarano , an excellent musician, passionate about ancient history like me and many others in my Vicenza. He was able to complete it first of all, obviously, Count Montano, because first of all it is necessary to finance the works, which only at that point can become the toy of an artist or a master builder, in my case of someone halfway between the two, a architect. But at a high price:

The Franciscans had built it three centuries earlier on a vineyard , the great Jacopo Sansovino - proto of Venice before me - had completely rebuilt it at the behest of Doge Andrea Gritti, who was buried here when I was little more than a boy. Thirty years later, once again thanks to Daniele Barbaro , the facade was entrusted to me by the patriarch of Aquileia . To me, not to Sansovino who was still in his place. I was the new one who was advancing, among the patricians o

With each passing year I took a step deeper into the heart of Venice . The Zeno , or Zen, one of the twelve ancient houses in Venice , in which the first body of the patrician nobility was established, concurring to elect the doge. The Zen greatly contributed to the growth and power of the city, reaching the land we now call America before Columbus , first discovering the ghost island of Frislanda in the North Sea. This will then remain, the villa of the Zeno, the villa of e

Giovanni Chiericati was the brother of Girolamo , so I was building the palace on the island of Vicenza. The villa was the first occasion for a very simple idea of mine, which I then took up elsewhere and which was so lucky all over the world. A house preceded simply by the pronaos (the part in front of the "cell", that is the closed, walled part) of a slender Ionic temple , sufficient to completely transform its appearance. A construction site that struggled to take off,

Like Palazzo Thiene , the Villa for Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene was also designed by the great Giulio Romano , the family architect who was in close contact with the Gonzagas of Mantua.​ At the beginning of my career as an architect, I was actually the director of the works here, knowing how to show the masons how to do without stone as much as possible, in favor of terracotta even in different shaped parts. I was a construction man myself. ​But soon Francesco died, at

Brother of Zuanne, father of Carrier, Daniele and Marco of the Villa di Bagnolo , was Francesco Pisani , another Venetian patrician whom I could call a friend. The Pisani dal Banco it can be said that they ruled Venice itself. The credit of the state for the banking family totaled hundreds of thousands of ducats, so without the funds of the Pisans, it can be said that Venice would not have held up the League of Cambrai. Francesco was the churchman of the Pisans, a cardina

I had my wings unfold to offer the maximum opening, the widest image to the eye, of what was transformed from a house into a palace with the least effort. The dovecote towers at the ends conclude the barchesse , which do not actually reach the central main body, thus leaving it free from stables and cellars, elevated on a high podium preceded by a triumphal staircase . Leonardo Emo. Leonardo like his grandfather, who had left him the estate in which he had introduced, for t