The most notable feature of the edifice is the loggia, which shows one of the first examples of what have come to be known as the Palladian window, designed by a young Andrea Palladio, whose work in architecture was to have a significant effect on the field during the Renaissance and later periods.

The building was originally constructed in the 15th century and was known as the Palazzo della Ragione, having been designed by Domenico da Venezia to include two pre-existing public palazzi.

It has five bells in the chord of E. The 15th-century edifice had an upside-down cover, partly supported by large archivolts, inspired by the one built in 1306 for the eponymous building of Padua.

Palladio added a new outer shell of marble classical forms, a loggia and a portico that now obscure the original Gothic architecture.

The serliana had been already used in the Veneto some years before by Jacopo Sansovino for his Biblioteca Marciana (1537), as well as in the reconstruction of the Polirone Abbey by Giulio Romano (1540).

The loggias in the lower floor were in the Doric order; the associated entablature has a frieze which alternates metope (decorated by dishes and bucrania) and triglyphs.