Europe's largest producer of textiles and the focus of Italy's "Silicon Valley", VICENZA is a very sleek city, where it can seem that every second car is a BMW. Modern prosperity hasn't ruined the look of Vicenza, though. The centre of the city, still partly enclosed by medieval walls, is an amalgam of Gothic and Classical buildings that today looks much as it did when the last major phase of construction came to an end at the close of the eighteenth century. This historic core is compact enough to be explored in a day, but the city and its environs really require a short stay to do them justice.
In 1404 Vicenza was absorbed by Venice, and the city's numerous Gothic palaces reflect its status as a Venetian satellite. But in the latter half of the sixteenth century the city was transformed by the work of an architect who owed nothing to Venice and whose rigorous but flexible style was to influence every succeeding generation - Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, alias Palladio
The City
The main street of Vicenza, the Corso Andrea Palladio , cuts right through the old centre from the Piazza del Castello down to the Piazza Matteotti, and is lined with palaces, all of them now occupied by shops, offices and banks. Palladio's last palace, the fragmentary Palazzo Porto-Breganze , stands on the southern side of Piazza Castello; no. 163 on the Corso, the Casa Cogollo , is known as the Casa del Palladio, though he never lived there and few people think he designed it. |
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