Villa Pisani at Montagnana

Palladio built this villa for Francesco Pisani around 1552, immediately outside Montagnana's eastern gate — so close to the walls that it reads as a town house rather than a farm villa, which is what makes it unusual among his work.

Almost every other villa he designed was the headquarters of a working estate, placed to oversee the land it managed. This one has no land. It was built for a patrician who wanted a presence at the gate of a walled town, and the design is compact to match: two storeys, a front of stacked orders, and none of the long service wings that spread his rural villas across the countryside.

It is inscribed on the UNESCO list with his other villas, and it is regularly walked past by visitors who came for the two kilometres of medieval brick next to it.

This is a private house on a residential street. Photograph the façade from the public pavement, and do not enter the grounds or approach the windows.

It sits a two-minute walk from Montagnana's walls, so seeing it adds nothing to a journey already being made — the easiest kind of low-impact visit there is.

Montagnana is a working town rather than a tourist centre, and coming by train instead of driving helps keep it one. Eating or staying locally puts money somewhere that sees a small fraction of the visitors the better-known Veneto towns do.

The villa is privately owned, and interior access is restricted and irregular. Check before travelling specifically for it.

The exterior stands on a public street immediately outside the Porta Padova and can be seen at any hour, for nothing — which for most visitors is the realistic visit.

It is about five minutes' walk from the centre. Montagnana has a station on the Mantua–Monselice line with trains from Padua in roughly an hour, so the whole trip works without a car, and most people fold the villa into the walk around the walls — about forty minutes, level the whole way.