Palladio became one of the most influential architects in history and his villas designed in the countryside around Venice are amongst the most beautiful houses ever built. They aimed to express the ideals of reason, humanity and civilization in Renaissance life and to provide practical settings from which the sophisticated merchants or gentry from Vicenzia and Venice could exercise their privileges as landowners and their responsibilities as farmers. In this illustrated book the author explores special qualities of the architecture, provides a guide for visitors, and also sets them among the people, practicalities and beliefs which gave them life.