Andrea Palladio (November 30, 1508 – August 19, 1580), was a Venetian architect, widely considered the most influential architect in the history of Western architecture. He was influenced by Roman and Greek architecture.

He was born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, then part of the Republic of Venice. His father Pietro called "della Gondola" was a miller. Palladio began his career as a stonecutter in Padua when he was 13, from 1521 he frequented the workshop of Bartolomeo Cavazza from Sossano. Then in april 1523 Andrea broke his contract after only 18 months and fled to the nearby city of Vicenza. Here he became an assistant in the leading workshop of stonecutters and masons, working for the Pedemuro workshop.

His talents were first recognized in his early thirties by Count Gian Giorgio Trissino, an influential humanist and writer. As the leading intellectual in Vicenza, Trissino stimulated the young man to appreciate the arts, sciences and Classical literature and granted him the opportunity to study Antique architecture in Rome. It was also Trissino who gave him the name by which he is now known, Palladio, an allusion to the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas Athene and to a character of a play of Trissino itself. Indeed the word Palladio means Wise one. After Trissino's death in 1550 Palladio benefited from the patronage of the Barbaro brothers, Daniele Barbaro, who encouraged his studies of classical architecture and brought him to Rome in 1554, and the younger brother Marcantonio Barbaro. The powerful Barbaros introduced Palladio to Venice, where he finally became "Proto della Serenissima" (chief architect of the Republic of Venice) after Jacopo Sansovino.