11
May 2026

The perfect house - Andrea Palladio's Venetian villas

Welcome to The Arts Society North Yorkshire & South Durham
Monday, May 11, 2026 - 14:00
Blackwell Grange Hotel
Grange Road Darlington DL3 8QH
Online Event

Palladio’s villas are his most celebrated accomplishment because of their beauty, practicality and, in cases such as the Villa Rotunda, its iconic image. The villas were also known through the woodcuts that illustrated Palladio’s treatise the Four Books of Architecture, which meant that they were copied and imitated in Britain and America. This talk examines why his villas have such enduring appeal .

Professor Andrew Hopkins
Previously Assistant Director of the British School at Rome from 1998 to 2002 and since 2004, Associate Professor at the University of L'Aquila. Part of his PhD (Courtauld Institute 1995) on Venetian architecture was awarded the Essay Medal of 1996 by the Society of Architectural Historians (GB). A Fellow at Harvard University's Villa I Tatti in Florence in 2003-2004, and in 2009 was the Paul Mellon Senior Visiting Fellow, Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Amongst his many publications are, with Arnold Witte, Alois Riegl, The Origins of Baroque Art in Rome (2010), and Baldassare Longhena and the Venetian Baroque (2012).