Palazzo Valmarana (Braga)

On Corso Fogazzaro, Palazzo Valmarana shows the boldest facade Palladio designed for a private house in Vicenza. Commissioned in 1565 by Isabella Nogarola Valmarana, it sets a giant order of pilasters under armored figures at the corners, and it belongs to the city's UNESCO World Heritage inscription.

Why it matters

Palazzo Valmarana marks the moment Palladio carried the vocabulary of ancient monuments into domestic architecture. The catalogue of the Palladio museum records that here, for the first time in one of his palaces, a giant order of six composite pilasters runs the full height of the facade, layered over a minor order of Corinthian pilasters — an arrangement the design literature connects with his late, Roman manner and with Michelangelesque grandeur. The March 1945 bombings gutted the palace's roof and rear facade, and postwar restoration returned the facade to the street. The palace is inscribed among the Palladian buildings of the World Heritage site.

What to notice

The facade has two registers: giant composite pilasters rise through both main floors to an attic, while a smaller Corinthian order articulates the openings between them. The famous surprise is at the edges. Where the rhythm demands a final pilaster on each side, Palladio instead set armored warriors — the figures usually called telamons — one carrying the Valmarana coat of arms in relief, exposing the logic of the system even as it dramatises it. The plain brick side front was left unfinished against the irregular lot. The ground-floor hall retains fresco decoration from 1567–68; surviving Zelotti frescoes are the palace's only pre-war painted decoration to have survived intact.

Context and history

The commission came in 1565 from Isabella Nogarola Valmarana, widow of Giovanni Alvise, who is credited with having chosen Palladio and who signed the masons' contracts herself in December 1565; a foundation medal recovered at the atrium column bases bears the date 1566 and her profile. Construction continued into the following decade, though only the street block was completed, and the idealized plan published in the Quattro Libri shows a grander project than the irregular lot allowed. A Valmarana house had stood here since at least 1487, so Palladio's role was a monumental renewal. The bombing of 18 March 1945 destroyed the roof and the rear facade; the family sold the palace in 1960 to Vittor Luigi Braga Rosa, from the second name it carries today, and his restorations, continuing through the 1960s, secured the structure and the facade visitors see now.