Pope Villa, Lexington

The Pope Villa, Built by Benjamin Henry Latrobe & Located In Lexington Kentucky


The Pope Villa is Latrobe’s best surviving domestic design. Its plan is unique in American residential architecture: a perfect square, with a domed, circular rotunda in the center of the second story. Latrobe drew inspiration from 16th century Italian architect Andrea Palladio, but unlike Palladio’s villas, the cubic mass of the Pope Villa conceals within itself a surprising sequence of rectilinear and curvilinear rooms, dramatically splashed with light and shadow. Latrobe called these interior effects “scenery”; they reflect this reliance on the compositional principles of 18th century Picturesque landscape design. Latrobe’s fusion of classical sources and Picturesque theory places the Pope Villa among the most important buildings of Federal America.


Owned and being restored by The Blue Grass Trust