Bellisima Vicenza

I dedicated today to Andrea Palladio, an Italian Renaissance architect who lived from 1508 – 1580. Because of the expansive educational background in architecture that I gained during law school, I am always keen to expand my knowledge.

Most of Palladio’s buildings are in Vicenza – a city of about 112,000 that is about 40 miles west of Venice. I had a long list of buildings I wanted to see and I have learned that day trips are ripe pickings for travel breakdowns and so we hired Roberta Parlato, who is an actual architectural historian who has focused her research on Palladio’s work and Palladian architecture in general.

Because Roberta is a true academic, we could really only afford to hire her for 3 hours and so I figured we could get acquainted with Vicenza with Roberta and then I could take over and be in charge which, as is often the case with my plans, seems reasonable back at home.

In our exploratory email exchanges, I had warned Roberta that I have a limited appreciation for art and so, as we walked along, before she would point out a piece of art, she would acknowledge that I don’t like art. And then she would give me just the tiniest little description of some of the key pieces of art in Vicenza and it was all good!

Vicenza is absolutely beautiful! The main square of the city is lined with Palladian buildings like this (pic borrowed):

And it’s filled with quiet courtyards under the Palladian arches:

The Olympic Theatre in Vicenza was one of Palladio’s last works. It was built in around 1580. It is the first and oldest permanent covered theatre of post-Middle Age history. It’s hidden inside this most misleading exterior, which is typical for Palladian architecture, although the theatre is an extreme example since it was previously a prison. Building exteriors focused on symmetry, proportion, and relative austerity. But the interiors were a riot of frescoes, grand columns and elaborate statuary. So here’s that theatre outside:

And here is the inside of the theatre. The stage is set as a 6-street little town, used for the premier 1585 performance – Oedipus Rex. I’m including a couple of pictures to try to give you a sense of this place…one is borrowed as I actually did not have a functioning camera today and was working with Ron’s iPhone (left the camera chip in Venice but, hey, I got us on the right train). I was awestruck by it all:

From the theatre, Roberta took us on a tour of a few other Palladian properties and I just want to share my two favorite architectural details. (Note: there is art in these palaces too and Roberta made sure I saw some of it). One is this fireplace:

And the other is this toilet, set in the middle of the stairwell. Roberta says there was no privacy in these houses at all – the only place you could be alone was in your bed with the curtain drawn around you.

We had a fantastic time with Roberta but it was time to set out on our own. I had a plan to see two more Palladian villas – Villa Valmarana ai Nani and Villa Rotunda, both a 10 minute cab ride from town. I asked Roberta about walking there and she said that the roads were not nice to walk and I was afraid to question her any further.

In my defense, I did try to find us a cab. I had, in fact, downloaded an Italian taxi app for this day trip and so I loaded my ride request into the app a few times and was told that no ride could be offered. Then I wandered around for a bit, looking fruitlessly for a cab, and I could feel Ron’s long-simmering doubt brewing.

With no other option, I pulled up some walking directions and we headed out. It was only moments before the familiar GPS-panic set in as I walked, staring at the phone, watching it “reroute” over and over again no matter which direction I chose. I finally managed to walk us out of the downtown pedestrian core until we hit the high-speed traffic area, at which point I flagged down a woman out for a walk, showed her my GPS map, said Villa Rotunda a few times, smiled, and voila! she correctly assessed my Italian language skills and motioned for us to follow her and she walked us right to the villa! So we had a lovely 20 minute stroll with her. I tried to think of anything I could offer in Italian and came up with Bellisima Vicenza, which made her smile, probably due to extreme syntax error.

This is Villa Valmarana, built in 1670. It is still privately owned and lived in so we were only allowed in the downstairs area and the guest house.

The best part of this villa were the frescoes in the guest house. The house was apparently damaged by bombing in 1944 and all of the frescoes were removed, put into storage, and then reattached. When I think of frescoes, I think of bible scenes, angels etc. But look at this one – a monkey, stealing some fruit, and climbing a staircase:

We headed over to Villa Rotunda, construction started in 1567, but finished a few decades later. Villa Rotunda has been the model for all sorts of monumental buildings – our White House and Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello are two. Here’s an extremely small picture of the exterior as, at this point, I had killed Ron’s iPhone battery (second useless photography device of the day) which left only my substandard OnePlus phone camera. Actual house quite large etc. but you get the idea:

The interior is the more typical frescoed look – well-placed fig leaves, angels etc:

From Villa Rotunda, we headed back to the train station. We were already at 9 walking miles for our day. Here’s the trail that connects the two villas, although as we were walking we had no idea where it headed. Our new Italian friend had thoughtlessly abandoned us and we were on our own:

Ok, that’s it from here. Time to head out on yet another day trip – this time to Padua.