The magnificent bigger-than-life Basilica Palladiana is not a church at all and was only partially designed by Palladio. Beneath it stood a Gothic-style Palazzo della Ragione (Law Courts and Assembly Hall) that Palladio was commissioned to convert to a High Renaissance style befitting a flourishing late- 16th-century city under Venice’s benevolent patronage. It was Palladio’s first public work and secured his favor and reputation with the local authorities. He created two superimposed galleries, the lower with Doric pillars, the upper with Ionic. The roof was destroyed by World War II bombing but has since been rebuilt in its original style.
It’s open April to September, Tuesday to Saturday from 9:30am to noon and from 2 to 7pm; Sunday from 9:30am to 12:30pm and from 2 to 7pm. Off season, it’s closed Sunday afternoon; free admission.

The Villa Rotonda, alternatively referred to as Villa Capra Valmarana after its owners, is considered one of the most perfect buildings ever constructed and has been added to the World Heritage List by UNESCO; it is a particularly important must-do excursion for students and lovers of architecture. Most authorities refer to it as Palladio’s finest work. Obviously inspired by ancient Greek and Roman designs, Palladio began this perfectly proportioned square building topped by a dome in 1567; it was completed between 1580 and 1592 by Scamozzi after Palladio’s death. It is worth a visit if only to view it from the outside (in fact, you can really see much of it from the gate).
Admission to enter the grounds for outside viewing is 3€; admission to visit the lavishly decorated interior is 6€.
The grounds are open March 15 to November 4, Tuesday to Sunday 10am to noon and 3 to 6pm, the interior only Wednesday and Saturday during the same hours

Though known as the “House of Palladio”, in reality this building has no connection whatsoever with the residence of the Vicentine master. Rather it is its dimensions, quite contained if compared to the monumental emphasis of other Palladian palaces, which has forced into error all those who sought a visible sign of the architect’s domicile in the city. In truth, the Maggior Consiglio forced the notary Pietro Cogollo to remodel the façade of his Quattrocento house as a contribution to the “decorum of the city”, making this provision (and a monetary investment in the work of not less than 250 ducats) a condition of the positive response to his request to gain Vicentine Ccitizenship. In the absence of documents and autograph designs, the attribution to Palladio of this most elegant façade still divides scholars. Yet, because of the intelligence of the architectural solution proposed, as well as the design of all the details, it is difficult to refer the project to any other designer. 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 sort of tabernacle which framed a fresco by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo. The ground level arch is flanked by two rectangular spaces which illuminate and provide access to the portico. Altogether they compose a type of serliana, as already done at the Basilica. The result is a composition of great monumental and expressive force, despite the simplicity of the means available.

When one compares the Gothic arches of the Palazzo Ducale in Venezia to the loggias of Palladio’s Basilica, inspired by the classical language of ancient Rome (and even more if one compares the Cinquecento palaces of Vicenza with those on the Grand Canal) the Vicentines’ desire to emphasise a cultural autonomy from the architectural models of La Serenissima becomes quite clear. Nevertheless, twenty years later, when the Citizen Council commissioned for the same piazza the refacing of the official residence of the Venetian Captaincy, the military head in charge of the city on behalf of the Venetian Republic, Palladio would still be the protagonist of the undertaking, and the contest, if any, was between two extraordinary architectures rising one in front of the other. It is extremely rare that any architect has the possibility to intervene twice in the same place, with an interval of twenty years. The young architect of the Basilica, then still under the supervision of Giovanni da Porlezza, was by now the celebrated author of several important buildings: churches, palaces and villas for the dominant élite of the Veneto. Palladio chose that the two buildings not converse: confronting the purism of the Basilica’s double-storey arcades (in white stone and devoid of decoration, if one ignores the design of architectural elements like the frieze, keystones and statues) are the Loggia’s colossal engaged Composite columns stemming the tide of very rich stucco decorations. Both the use of the giant order and this decorative richness are twin traits peculiar to Palladio’s language in the last decade of his life. However, the chromatic contrast between the white of the stone and the red of the brick (even though desired by Palladio in the Convento della Carità in Venice) is only the product of the original surfaces’ degradation: ample remains of the light stucco which once covered the bricks are still quite visible, just below the great Composite capitals. The Palladian loggia substituted an analogous, structure which had stood on the same site from the Middle Ages, and which had already been reconstructed at least twice during the Cinquecento: a covered public loggia on the ground floor and an audience hall on the upper storey. The new construction became economically viable in April 1571 and works began immediately. Palladio supplied the last drawings for the moulding templates in March 1572 and by the end of that year the building was roofed if Giannantonio Fasolo could paint the lacunars of the audience hall and Lorenzo Rubini execute the stuccoes and statues. While the upper hall displays a flat, coffered ceiling, the ground floor loggia has a sophisticated vault covering, certainly to better sustain the weight of the hall. The overall design is extremely sophisticated, as for example the portals which open within the niches and follow their curvature. It is fruitless to engage in the sterile and age-old debate on the hypothesised intentional extension of the loggia to five (or seven?) bays. What is altogether more interesting is Palladio’s compositional liberty, designing in a radically different manner the façade onto the Piazza to that on the Contra’ del Monte, thereby somewhat rupturing the building’s unitary logic. On closer observation, however, Palladio limited himself to applying an adequate response to different situations: the piazza’s broad visual frontage (also bearing in mind the dimensional constraints of the narrow façade) made necessary the powerful verticalising of the giant order; the reduced dimensions both of the building’s flank and of the Contra’ del Monte itself obliged the use of a more temperate order. Moreover, the façade onto the Contra’ del Monte would be used as a sort of perennial triumphal arch recording the victory gained by the Venetian forces over the Turks at the battle of Lepanto in October 1571.

The sumptuous residence realised between 1570 and 1575 for the Vicentine noble Montano Barbarano is the only great city palace that Andrea Palladio succeeded in executing in its entirety. At least three different autograph projects survive, preserved in London, which document alternative hypotheses for the building’s plan, all quite different from the actual one and testimony to a complex design process. Barbarano, in fact, requested Palladio to respect the existence of various houses belonging to the family and already existing on the area of the new palace. Moreover, once the project was finalised Barbarano acquired a further house adjoining the property, which resulted in the asymmetrical positioning of the entrance portal. In any case, the constraints imposed by the site and by a practical patron became the occasion for courageous and refined solutions: Palladio’s intervention is magisterial, elaborating upon a sophisticated project for “restructuring” which blended the diverse pre-existing structures into a unified edifice. On the ground floor, a magnificent four-columned atrium welds together the two pre-existing building lots. In realising the scheme, Palladio was called upon to resolve two problems: one statical, how to support the floor of the great hall on the piano nobile; the other compositional, how to restore a symmetrical appearance to interiors compromised by the oblique course of the perimeter walls from the pre-existing houses. Departing from the model of the wings of the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome, Palladio divided the interior into three aisles, placing centrally four Ionic columns which allowed the reduction of the span of the central cross-vaults, set against lateral barrel vaults. He thus achieved a very statically efficient framework capable of bearing the floor of the hall above without any difficulty. The central columns were then tied to the perimeter walls by fragments of rectilinear trabeation, which absorb the irregularities of the atrium plan: in this way he realised a sort of system of “serlianas”, a stratagem conceptually similar to that of the Basilica loggias. Palladio even adopted the unusual type of Ionic capital — derived from the Temple of Saturn in the Forum Romanum — because it permitted him to mask the slight but significant rotations necessary to align the columns and engaged columns. To decorate the palace, in several campaigns Montano employed some of the greatest artists of his time: Battista Zelotti (who had already intervened in the interiors of Palladio’s Villa Emo at Fanzolo), Anselmo Canera and Andrea Vicentino; the stuccoes were entrusted to Lorenzo Rubini (who contemporaneously executed the external decorations of the Loggia del Capitanio) and, after his death in 1574, to his son Agostino. The net result was a sumptuous palace capable of rivalling the residences of the Thiene, the Porto and of the Valmarana, a palace which permitted its patron to represent himself to the city as an ranking member of the Vicentine cultural élite. In his History of Vicenza of 1591, Iacopo Marzari records Montano Barbarano as a man “of belles lettres and most excellent musician”. Various flutes figure in the 1592 inventory of the palace, confirming the existence of an intensive musical activity there.

San Lorenzo was built by the Franciscans in the 13th century, and parts of the Basilica of Sts. Felice and Fortunato date back to the 4th century.

Many doubts surround the genesis and paternity of the arch which began the access route to the sanctuary of Monte Berico, prior to the mid-eighteenth century realitazion of the porticoes themselves by Francesco Muttoni. What appears to be certain is the date of construction (fixed at 1595) and the identity of the patron, the Venetian captain Giacomo Bragadino. Equally well documented are the requests of the friars of the Sanctuary, from 1574-1576, to gain financial support from the Community in order to reconstruct the entire stepped route (“le Scalette”) to Monte Berico. However, there is no proof as to whether the arch was included in this process of general reconstruction, which affected the Sanctuary itself as well. Just as uncertain is the original configuration of the arch, which seventeenth century images show to have had frontal niches, subsequently shifted to the intrados in order to make room for the Annunciation by Orazio Marinali.

The splendid Teatro Olimpico was Palladio’s greatest urban work, and one of his last. He began the project in 1580, the year of his death at the age of 72; it would be completed 5 years later by his student Vicenzo Scamozzi. It was the first covered theater in Europe, inspired by the theaters of antiquity. The seating area, in the shape of a half-moon as in the old arenas, seats 1,000. The stage seems profoundly deeper than its actual 4.2m, thanks to the permanent stage “curtain” and Scamozzi’s clever use of trompe l’oeil added after Palladio’s death. The stage scene represents the ancient streets of Thebes, while the faux clouds and sky covering the dome further the impression of being in an outdoor Roman amphitheater. Drama, music, and dance performances are still held here year-round; check with the tourist office.

The construction of the apse in the Cathedral of Vicenza had begun in 1482 to the design of Lorenzo da Bologna, but in 1531 it was still unfinished. Early, temporary, roofing was erected in 1540, as a result of the possibility that Vicenza might host the Church Council which in the end was held at Trent. Only in 1557 did the Comune of Vicenza receive the financial means necessary from the Republic of Venice, in the shape of a bequest left by Bishop Zeno at the beginning of the century, and were therefore able to set in motion the work’s completion. Andrea Palladio, the author of the new project, most probably drew up an overall design which was however executed in two phases: from 1558 to 1559 the main cornice was built over the windows and the drum raised, while from 1564 to January 1566 the dome itself was constructed. The characteristic form of the lantern, abstract and devoid of decoration, was replicated on the summit of the cupolas of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice (planned in the same years), and is also present in some of Palladio’s reconstructions of centrally planned antique temples, such as the Mausoleum of Romulus on the Via Appia.
In 1560 Paolo Almerico asked the Cathedral Chapter for permission to erect a portal at his own expense on the north side of the Cathedral, in correspondence with the chapel of San Giovanni Evangelista. This is the same Paolo Almerico who a few years later would commission the construction of the Villa Rotonda from Palladio. The portal was opened in 1565, probably on the occasion of the solemn entrance of the bishop Matteo Priuli. In the absence of documents or autograph drawings, the attribution to Palladio rests firstly on the portal’s affinities with antique models well known to the architect (like the portal of the Temple of Fortuna Virile) and secondly its similarity to the design of the lateral portals of the Cathedral of San Pietro di Castello in Venice, which Palladio designed in 1558.

This is Vicenza’s most interesting church, set back on the left on the Via Santa Corona 2 (open daily 8:30am–noon and 2:30–6pm). An unremarkable 13th-century Gothic church, begun in 1261. The exterior features a grandiose marble portal and an elegant belltower, and the interior with its three Gothic naves houses several works of art including the Baptism of Jesus by Giovanni Bellini (5th altar on left) , one of his last masterpieces, and Veronese’s Adoration of the Magi (3rd chapel on right).  Next door is the museum of natural history which holds a number of interesting historical artifacts around the Veneto area.  The origins of Vicenza go way back to the beginning of european civilization. The people of the Veneto region settled here several centuries before the birth of Christ.

In November 1550, Girolamo Chiericati recorded a payment to Palladio in his own “account book” for the designs of his palace in the city, sketched out at the beginning of the year. In the same month, Girolamo was appointed to supervise the administration of the building works on the Loggias of the Basilica, inaugurated in May 1549. This coincidence was not remotely casual: along with Trissino, Chiericati was among those who sponsored entrusting this prestigious public commission to the young architect, for whose interests he had personally fought in the Council, and to whom he would turn for the design of his own home. Moreover, a few years later his brother Giovanni would also commission from Palladio the villa at Vancimuglio. In 1546 Girolamo had inherited a few old houses looking onto the so-called “Piazza dell’Isola”, an open space on the southern outskirts of the city, which owed its name to the fact that it was bordered on two sides by the Retrone and the Bacchiglione, whose courses flowed into each other. As the city’s river port, the “Isola” was the seat of the timber and cattle markets. The tiny size of the old existing houses induced Girolamo to ask the City Council for permission to utilise a strip of roughly four and a half metres of public land in front of his properties in order to realise the portico of his house on the site, but guaranteeing its public use. Once the request was accepted building work begun immediately in 1551, only to halt in 1557 on the death of Girolamo, whose son Valerio limited himself to decorating the internal spaces, employing an extraordinary équipe of artists which included Ridolfi, Zelotti, Fasolo, Forbicini and Battista Franco. For more than a century Palazzo Chiericati remained a majestic fragment (similar to the present state of the Palazzo Porto in the Piazza Castello) interrupted half way along its fourth bay, as documented in the Pianta Angelica and voyagers’ sketchbooks. Only at the end of the Seicento would it be completed according to the design in the Quattro Libri. Several autograph drawings by Palladio survive to record the evolution of the project, from the first solution where the portico projects only at the centre of the façade (as well as being capped by a pediment, like that later executed on the Villa Cornaro) to the actual one. The plan was determined by the site’s narrow dimensions: a central bi-apsidal atrium is flanked by two nuclei of three rooms of harmonically linked dimensions (3:2; 1:1; 3:5), each with its own spiral service stair and a further, monumental one to one side of the back loggia (another element which will return in the Villa Pisani and Villa Cornaro). To endow the building with magnificence, but also to protect it from the frequent floods (and from the cattle sold in front of the palace on market days), Palladio raised the palace on a podium, whose central section displays a stairway clearly adapted from an antique temple. The extraordinary novelty which the Palazzo Chiericati offers in the panorama of renaissance urban residences owes a great deal to Palladio’s capacity to interpret the site on which it rises: a great open space on the margins of the city, in front of the river, a context which rendered it an ambiguous building, simultaneously palazzo and villa suburbana. It is no coincidence that many affinities exist with the Villa Cornaro at Piombino and the Villa Pisani at Montagnana, which were moreover constructed during the same years. On the Piazza dell’Isola, Palladio set a façade with a two-storey loggia capable of visually holding the open space, and which also established one side of a hypothetical, ancient, Roman Forum. Even though superimposed loggias are present in Peruzzi’s Palazzo Massimo in Rome and in the Antique Courtyard of the Bo by Moroni in Padua, the use to which Palladio puts them on the façade of the Palazzo Chiericati is absolutely unheralded in terms of its power and expressive awareness. The Basilica and Palazzo Chiericati represent Palladio’s definitive passage from the eclecticism of his early years to the full maturity of a language where the stimuli and sources of both the Antique and contemporary architecture are absorbed into a system by now specifically Palladian. This is the first occasion on which the loggia flank is closed by a wall section containing an arch: a solution adopted from the Portico di Ottavia in Rome which will thereafter become usual practice in the pronaos of his villas.

From here it is only a 10-minute walk to the Villa Valmarana, also called ai Nani (dwarves) after the statues that line the garden wall. Built in the 17th century by Mattoni, an admirer and follower of Palladio, it is an almost commonplace structure whose reason to visit is an interior covered with remarkable 18th-century frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico.
Admission is 5€, 7€ if you want to visit outside regular hours, which are complicated.
It’s open mornings as follows: March 15 to November 5, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday 10am to noon

The Criptoportico Romano In Piazza Duomo underneath the Palazzetto Proti was once part of an ancient patrician home. This underground villa has stood the test of time and is one of the last remaining so well preserved in Italy. In Roman times Criptoporticos were used as passage ways to connect adjoining buildings, as storage space for provisions and arms or to surround a monumental square having a sacred or public building inside it. Originally the Criptoportico in Vicenza was set partway into the ground in order to keep the inhabitants cool during hot summer days, but with the passage of time it has now become completely submerged. It extends from under the Proti Palace to the Canonica on the southern end of piazza Duomo. It can be visited on Saturdays mornings from 10 - 12 and must be booked well in advance.

Across the Piazza Matteotti is another Palladian opus, the Palazzo Chiericati, which houses the Museo Civico (Municipal Museum). Looking more like one of the country villas for which Palladio was equally famous, this major work is considered one of his finest and is visited as much for its two-tiered, statuetopped facade as for the collection of Venetian paintings it houses on the first floor. Venetian masters you’ll recognize include Tiepolo, Tintoretto, and Veronese, while the lesser-known include works from the Vicenzan (founded by Bartolomeo Montagna) and Bassano schools of painting.