Unlike more typical Palladian villas – and their imitations in Britain, Germany and the United States – the Villa Pisani at Montagnana combines an urban front, facing a piazza of the comune, and, on the other side, a rural frontage extending into gardens, with an agricultural setting beyond.

Unlike many of Palladio's villas in purely rural settings, it has an upper storey, set apart from more public reception rooms on the main floor; twin suites of apartments are accessed by twin oval staircases that flank the central recess on the garden side.

On the garden front, access to the park is from the central recessed portico only; a balustrade above a deep ditch keeps out informal wanderers.

The central block is an uncompromising rectangle, with a pedimented tetrastyle portico, Ionic over Doric, that has been sunk into its wall-plane so that the columns are embedded half-columns.

The woodcut shows an idealized, amplified form of the villa, in which the central block is flanked by arched gateway structures that end in tall, three-storey tower-like pavilions.