The piano nobile (Italian, "noble floor" or "noble level", also sometimes referred to by the corresponding French term, bel étage) is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of classical renaissance architecture.
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The constraints posed by a narrow space and the impossibility of opening windows at the centre of the piano nobile (because of an existing fireplace and its flue) induced Palladio to emphasise the façade’s central axis, by realising a structure with a ground floor arch flanked by engaged columns, and on the upper storey a tabernacle frame for a fresco by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo.
Two facades of the pentagonal arrangement face the two gardens cut into the hill; each garden is accessed across the moat by a drawbridge from the apartments on the piano nobile and each is a parterre garden of box topiary with fountains.