Between 1540 and his death in 1580, Palladio created around a dozen palaces and public buildings in Vicenza, nearly twenty villas in the countryside of the Veneto and two important religious buildings in Venice. But unlike the pioneers of Renaissance Classicism - architects such as Alberti, Brunelleschi and Bramante - Palladio's reputation does not rest on a particular transformation of architectural style. Instead, his fame - and he is arguably the most influential architect in the world - rests on the way he is considered to have perfected existing values of harmony and proportion.

In particular, his lasting influence stems from I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura or "The Four Books of Architecture", a treatise he published in 1570, towards the end of his career. Other architects had written important works of theory, but Palladio's is unique in its practical applicability, serving almost as a text book for Classical architecture. As the style spread into the rest of Europe and beyond, it was to Palladio's book that architects like Inigo Jones (and later, Thomas Jefferson) turned, finding both inspiration and guidance in his examples.

Today, Palladio has perhaps become the victim of his own success. The ubiquity of neo-Classicism in second-rate churches and third-rate bank buildings can make it hard to sense the freshness and brilliance of his designs, though it still shines through in masterpieces like the Basilica in Vicenza, the Villa Barbaro near A?solo and the churches of the Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice. Even if you're inclined to agree with Herbert Read's opinion that "in the back of every dying civilization there sticks a bloody Doric column", you might leave the region converted