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:The Jan Hus Memorial stands at one end of Old Town Square. The huge monument depicts victorious Hussite warriors and Protestants who were forced into exile 200 years after Hus, and a young mother who symbolises national rebirth. The monument was so large that the sculptor designed and built his own villa and studio where the work could be carried out. It was unveiled in 1915 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Jan Hus' martyrdom. The memorial was designed by Ladislav Šaloun and paid for solely by public donations.
Born in 1369, Hus became an influential religious thinker, philosopher, and reformer in Prague. He was a key predecessor to the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century. In his works he criticized religious moral decay of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, the Czech patriot Hus believed that mass should be given in the vernacular, or local language, rather than in Latin. He was inspired by the teachings of John Wycliffe.