The Castle of Thiene is considered the most notable 15th-century, Gothic building raised in the Vicenza area for civil use.
It is an extraordinary example of a pre-Palladio villa, the only one of its kind and a benchmark in the evolution of the Veneto villa.
The most complete expression of the Veneto Villa in terms of architecture was made in the 16th century with the buildings of Andrea Palladio (1508 - 1580). He managed to synthesise the aesthetic and functional needs of a kind of villa that then remained essentially the same until the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797.
But Palladio did not invent the concept of the villa: he updated the forms this farming residence had taken on over the previous centuries.
