There aren't many people who would build a replica of La Rotonda, Antonio Palladio's 16th century high Renaissance architectural masterpiece, on top of a mountain overlooking the troubled and impoverished West Bank city of Nablus. There are even fewer who would choose to complete it during the second intifada, when Palestinian militants and armoured Israeli forces were trading daily fire a mere 15 minutes' drive down the hill in the city's casbah and the teeming alleys of the Balata refugee camp.
But at 74, Munib al-Masri has the self confidence – and the money – not to worry about what many people would or wouldn't do. Not only did he decide to hire 500 local workers to build a jaw-droppingly ostentatious home on the edge of his beloved Nablus to return to after decades as a much-travelled top international businessman; he made the domed mansion a floor higher than the Palladian original in Vicenza "because I have a large family".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/king-of-the-west-bank-854336.html
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