Villa Porto, Molina di Malo

The ten brick-column shafts that dominate the great 15th century farmyard of the Porto family at Molina mark the first stage of a grandiose project conceived by Palladio on behalf of Iseppo (Giuseppe) Porto: in fact, the patron’s name is inscribed on the plinths of the splendid stone column bases, next to the date 1572.

Archival documents show that the enormous columns are not the fragments of a monumental barchessa, like that for the Villa Pisani at Bagnolo, but rather of the façade of a true and proper country residence.

The large Corinthian colonnade, a direct quotation from the pronaos of the Pantheon, would have reached an overall height of over thirteen metres.

Lower porticoes, on a quarter-circle plan and still visible in the 19th century, would have tied the manorial house to agricultural annexes to left and right.

In publishing Giuseppe Porto’s city palace in the Quattro libri, Palladio enriched the original project with a courtyard of a giant Composite order extremely close to that of the villa at Molina.