Give the flight of steps before a temple an odd number, so that one who starts with the right foot will also set the right foot first on the top.
Palladio on stairs
Place the stair where it does not spoil the rooms and yet is easily found; light it well; and make the steps no higher than half a foot and the treads at least a foot deep.
riser ≤ ½ ft (≈ 17 cm); going ≥ 1 ft (≈ 35 cm) in Vicentine feet
Palladio asks three things of a stair: a clear, well-lit opening at its foot, windows along its flight, and a landing at the top from which the rooms open. He classifies stairs as straight, with one or more flights and landings, or winding (a lumaca, “like a snail”), round or oval, with or without a central newel. He admired the double spiral stair at Chambord, where two people can go up and down at once without meeting.
The Vicentine foot was about 36 cm, so his limits give risers of 12 to 17 cm and goings of 35 cm or more: easy stairs by any standard, and close to Blondel’s rule a century later (Two risers and a going make a pace).
Related rules
Place the staircase by three tests: its relation to the principal rooms it serves; keeping the main axial communications free of obstruction; and light, for itself and, as a well of light, for the corridors and vestibules around it.
Raise the principal rooms of a house on a basement storey that holds the kitchens, cellars and service rooms, and reach them by an external stair; put the lesser rooms above them.
Where space is short, wind the stair round a newel or an open well; measure the going on the walking line, about halfway along the tread, where it should be as generous as on a straight flight.
Partway along the sixteen streets that run from the centre to the gates and towers, open a secondary square in each, and give half of them parish churches and the other half markets, so that every quarter has its church and its market close at hand.
Put the owner’s house at the centre and join the farm buildings to it with covered porticoes (barchesse), so that one can go everywhere under cover; give granaries, cellars, stables and threshing floor their proper places, in proportion to the estate.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Palladio on stairs”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/palladio-stairs. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.