Palladio's fame also rests on his Quattro Libri (Four Books of Architecture) published in 1570. They form a partwork on how to become an architect. The first book deals with materials, the second concentrates on his designs for town and country houses (ones that were built and ones that never left the drawing board), the third on town planning and how to build bridges. Palladio redesigned Venice's Rialto Bridge in stone, which would have been much more beautiful than the existing bridge but his five arches would have created a bottleneck on the Grand Canal. The last book covers Roman temples.

These books spread Palladio's architecture round the world. Inigo Jones brought the style to London, to Greenwich and the Whitehall Banqueting House. Lord Burlington recreated Palladio's Villa Rotonda in Chiswick. Thomas Jefferson used it as a model for his Virginia home, Monticello. Catherine the Great owned a Russian translation of the Quattro Libri . All this makes Palladio now more famous as an adjective, "Palladian".