Discover Villa Foscari (La Malcontenta)

The villa is a single compact block on a high podium, with an Ionic portico on the water front reached by two converging flights of steps.

The podium is a response to the site. The Brenta floods, so the living floor is lifted well clear of the ground, and what looks like classical dignity is also flood engineering.

The plan is Palladio's characteristic cross-shaped central hall, with rooms of carefully related proportions opening off it -- the mathematics of the room sizes is the part architects come for.

The rear elevation carries a large thermal window, borrowed from Roman bath architecture, lighting the hall.

Inside, the walls carry frescoes by Battista Franco and Giambattista Zelotti, mythological and allegorical, covering the hall and principal rooms.

There are no barchesse. That absence is the building's most telling feature: this villa never had to work.