Villa Valmarana (also known as Valmarana Bressan) is a patrician villa at Vigardolo, Monticello Conte Otto. The building is attributed to Andrea Palladio on the basis of an extant drawing of the villa that is undoubtedly by the great architect.
The villa was constructed during the 1540s, so it is one of Palladio's earlier works. It was commissioned by two cousins of the Valmarana family. The layout of the rooms suggests that Palladio's mandate was to provide accommodation for two nuclear families. The design also shows the influence of buildings from antiquity, which Palladio had, no doubt, seen on his first visit to Rome in 1541. The villa is decorated with frescoes, some of which date from the sixteenth century; they are more or less contemporaneous with the original occupation of the building.
In 1996 UNESCO included the building in the World Heritage Site named 'City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto'.
References:Visby Cathedral (also known as St. Mary’s Church) is the only survived medieval church in Visby. It was originally built for German merchants and inaugurated in 1225. Around the year 1350 the church was enlarged and converted into a basilica. The two-storey magazine was also added then above the nave as a warehouse for merchants.
Following the Reformation, the church was transformed into a parish church for the town of Visby. All other churches were abandoned. Shortly after the Reformation, in 1572, Gotland was made into its own Diocese, and the church designated its cathedral.
There is not much left of the original interior. The font is made of local red marble in the 13th century. The pulpit was made in Lübeck in 1684. There are 400 graves under the church floor.