Even before I arrived in the Veneto last summer, I'd heard from friends in Rome about the sale of the Villa Emo. It was a tragedy, a scandal, an outrage. From a distance (both geographical and social), it was hard to grasp the depth of feeling that this not-so-simple real estate transaction had provoked. But then again, most of us aren't about to sell a house that has been in our family for half a millennium. I'd read the story of how the twenty-seven-year-old Leonardo Emo had commissioned Palladio to build him a villa on his estate in Fanzolo, about thirty miles north of Venice, on the occasion of his marriage to Cornalia Grimani in 1565. Leonardo died young, at fifty-four, in one of the horrendous plagues that swept through Venice at the end of the sixteenth century, and in his will, he gave his wife permission to sell any property if she had to, adding, "but I beg that no part of the villa in Fanzolo be sold." Here was a man in love with a house. For almost five hundred years, his request was honored—until the present Count Emo decided that he could no longer afford the upkeep (he'd tried opening a restaurant in one wing and guest rooms in another) and sold it to a bank. The family had attempted to reason with him, had offered to buy it from him, but the deed had been done. And so, to see what the fuss was all about, this was the villa I decided to visit first.

Immediately, I noticed the elegant simplicity of the villa's facade. It is a dignified, masculine house, almost without any detail apart from the pediment, which sits on four gigantic Doric pillars at the top of what you'd expect to be a flight of steps. But as I got closer I saw that, instead of steps, I was about to walk up a broad, two-tiered stone ramp. Why, I wondered, did Palladio do this? Maybe it was an equestrian ramp that would allow riders to dismount at the front door? Or possibly it was a place to dry grain? Or to roll barrels up into the house? Or, most likely, he just wanted to design a spectacular ceremonial entrance to the villa. And if that was his intention, boy did he succeed. I stood at the top of the ramp, looked back down at the gardens and beyond them to the endless fields bordered by poplars shivering in the breeze, and way in the distance I saw a sliver of water shining like mercury in the sunlight.

For all their neoclassical grandeur, these villas were really part of working farms, not unlike the plantations of the antebellum South. The main house at the Villa Emo, with its exuberant frescoes, trompe l'oeil doorways, and sky-high ceilings, was obviously intended for entertaining (and blowing the minds of) visitors, but what about the two long arcaded wings (barchessa) that extend from each side? Aesthetically, they are the ideal balance to the central cube, with their perfectly proportioned square dovecotes at each end. But if you look at them more closely, you realize that with their lack of decoration and height, they are really just elongated barns. The Emos were one of the oldest and richest families in Venice, but by the beginning of the sixteenth century, no longer content with their palazzo in the city, they were eager to acquire a country estate in the Veneto. Wheat and millet were the traditional crops of this part of Italy, but Leonardo Emo introduced the cultivation of granturco (corn)—a far more profitable staple, which incidentally led to the invention of polenta.