Description of the attraction
Villa Saraceno is an aristocratic villa in Agugliaro in the province of Vicenza. It was built for the noble Saraceno family in the 1540s by the young architect Andrea Palladio. In 1570, Palladio depicted the original project of the villa in his treatise "Four Books on Architecture", but in reality the building was built in a more modest form, and the agricultural buildings that existed at that time were preserved (the project was supposed to be demolished). The reasons for this discrepancy between the plan and the actual building are still unknown, although this is not the only Palladio villa that differs from the original project.
Villa Saraceno is one of the simplest buildings of Palladio. Like most of his other creations, it combines high-profile living quarters with utilitarian annexes. Above "drunken nobile" there is a floor that was designed as a granary. Next to the main building from the 16th century, there is an annex built in the 19th century.
In the 20th century, Villa Saraceno fell into disrepair, while retaining the original frescoes. In 1989, it was bought by a British charitable foundation, which initiated restoration work, completed in 1994. The building of the villa, together with the adjacent agricultural buildings, has been converted into a country hotel for 16 people. And in 1996, the villa was included in the list of UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Sites. Today, the main rooms of the building are open to tourists, and in 2008, in the year of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Palladio, a new guide to Villa Saraceno was published.
