The Valmarana Palace was built by Andrea Palladio on the site where houses belonging to the same family existed. However, the construction is incomplete: in fact, the courtyard, garden, and stables were never built. GianAntonio Golin rightly noted that "if the Valmarana palace and that of M. A. Thiene had been completed as envisaged in the design, they would have created a complex and splendid monumental weave within the urban fabric of Vicenza, and, together with the Barbaran da Porto, they would have provided three classical episodes, arising from different moments in the mind of the Master, in a skillful integration with the Romanesque and Gothic context of the ancient city."
However, it must be kept in mind that Palladio's work should be read with attention to the relationship between theoretical solution and practical solution.
In this regard, it is useful to recall what Martin Kubelik has recently highlighted: even the project for this palace published in the Four Books of Architecture does not fully correspond to the realized construction. In fact, the building is smaller than the indications in the drawings, and the facade, adapting to the road’s layout, does not respect the perpendicularity ratio with the rear walls. Moreover, he states that if the palace had been completed, the stables would have overlapped with part of the complex conceived for Count Montano Barbaran. Therefore, what is indicated within the treatise is the result of a theoretical reworking.
