Andrea Palladio

Italian architect, architectural theorist and scenographer of the Renaissance

Place of birth
Padua, 30 November 1508 – Maser, 19 August 1580

Andrea Palladio, Aka Andrea di Pietro of the Gondola (Padua, November 30, 1508 – Maser, August 19, 1580), was an Italian architect, architectural theorist and scenographer of the Renaissance, citizen of the Republic of Venice. Influenced by Greco-Roman architecture, especially by Vitruvius, he is considered one of the most influential personalities in the history of Western architecture.

He was the most important architect of the Venetian Republic, in whose territory he designed numerous villas that made him famous, as well as churches and palaces, the latter mainly in Vicenza, where he trained and lived. He published the treatise The Four Books of Architecture (1570) through which his models had a profound influence on Western architecture; the imitation of his style gave rise to a movement destined to last for three centuries, Palladianism, which harks back to the principles of classical antiquity. The city of Vicenza and the Palladian villas of the Veneto are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Source Wikipedia

Of him, during his stay in Vicenza, Goethe said:

«There is truly something divine in his projects, no less than the strength of the great poet, who draws a third reality from truth and fiction, fascinating in its fictitious existence.»