It was designed in 1556[1] by Italian Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio for the Venetian noble Francesco Badoer, and built between 1557 and 1563 on the site of a medieval castle, which guarded a bridge across a navigable canal.

Constructed and inhabited in 1556, the villa therefore functioned for the management of the fields and was simultaneously a visible sign of the “feudal” presence, so to speak, of Badoer in the territory: it is not coincidental that the building rises on the site of an ancient medieval castle.

[4] Palladio succeeded in uniting within one effective synthesis these dual meanings, joining the majestic manor house to the two barchesse (farm wings) bent into semicircles, which screen the stables and other agricultural annexes.

This manoeuvre rendered necessary a scenographic staircase of several flights leading to the front door of the villa, the main descending to the courtyard and the two lateral ones connecting with the gable-ends of the barchesse.

The visual focus of the entire complex was centred precisely on the dominant axis of the great triangular pediment supported by Ionic columns, which bears the family arms, such that the villa's flanks and rear are unarticulated and present a simply utilitarian aspect.

Moreover, the distributive structure of the manorial house reveals Palladio's usual organisation into a vertical axis, with service rooms occupying the basement storey, the patron's habitation on the piano nobile, and a granary in the attic.

Puppi suggested "that the omission of the ceremonial features from the back façade had been decided by the patron, who must have thought them unnecessary in confrontation with the empty expanse of open countryside, and with the short extent of his property... on that side.