Vicenza is the home of Andrea Palladio, who designed many buildings in Vicenza and around northern Italy. He also published a book called I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura, or Four Books of Architecture, the name of which comes from a long tradition of architectural treatises regarding siting of cities and buildings, design, the Classical orders/columns, proportioning, materials, etc. dating back to Alberti’s De Re Aedificatoria or Ten Books of Architecture, the first treatise of the Renaissance which followed Vitruvius’s De Architectura (Ten Books of Architecture) from antiquity, the oldest surviving treatise. Palladio’s book was circulated widely throughout Europe, and it was through his book and other similar books that the Renaissance spread to northern Europe through varying interpretations.Our first stop on Palladio road was another roadside stop at Villa Capra, also known as La Rotunda or Villa Rotunda, one of his most famous villas. Similar to Villa Malcontenta, this villa was set in a picturesque landscape on a canal at the outskirts of a small village near Vicenza. It was a beautiful, cloudless day (still cold), so it made for some great photographs. We stopped at a couple of other villas as well before going into the city, the Villa Valmarana and Villa Thiene. Villas Capra and Valmarana are both privately owned and only open for tours on certain days, but Villa Thiene is located on the edge of a small village and actually functions as its town hall today.
In Vicenza, we were looking forward to seeing some of Palladio’s many buildings, but quickly realized that most of them were closed on Monday. Disappointed, but with many possibilities to see facades and interior courts, we headed into town towards the Basilica, which in this case refers to a row of three buildings that Palladio re-faced and combined to form the town hall for the city, complete with shops on the main level under the arcade and government functions above. Rather than an arcade with single columns (as we saw in Bologna, etc.), he used an ingenious device known as a Serliana, also known as the Palladian motif because of his frequent usage. You’ve probably all seen the pattern in houses everywhere, combining an arch with a column on either side, and then a beam on each side of the arch connecting to another column. The ingenious thing about it is that the outside columns can be shifted farther out and the beam can be lengthened, while the columns supporting the arch remain the same distance apart thereby keeping the arch the same size when using multiple bays of different widths. At the Basilica, for instance, the bays on the sides are about six feet shorter than the center bays, so the two columns on either side of the arch are much closer together. It is barely noticeable unless you look closely because all of the arches are the same height and width. There’s your architectural lesson for the day.
It was interesting to see how effectively good architects can improve the quality of nearly everything else built in the town, not only because of better design but improving construction methods and materials. (This is not necessarily true today because construction materials and methods for modernist buildings are often too complicated and unaffordable for the average client, especially those outside of large cities. In Palladio’s day for instance, everyone used masonry, so everyone benefited from improved quality regardless of whether they were using heavy stone or brick or a Classical or vernacular style.) The palazzo type (Italian urban mansions) that Palladio designed throughout Vicenza is essentially the form of 19th or early 20th century urban buildings with retail on the ground floor fronting the street and residential or commercial uses above (think of the Fred Building in Downtown Athens or the C&S National Bank (Bank of America/Georgia State) Building in Downtown Atlanta). The Palladian palazzo model creates an interesting problem though once the wealthy families move out because the ground floor of his buildings and those he inspired are usually solid masonry with only a wide central door and a passage that connects to a central cortile where the carriages would park. This is pretty anti-urban to have many of these around town because it is essentially a blank wall at the sidewalk, but in Vicenza, they have solved this by putting the shop fronts on either side of the passage leading to the cortile with parking in the cortile itself. Others have created an L-shaped galleria (much smaller version of what we saw in Brussels) that goes through the block from one palazzo door to another. There are somewhat messier versions in Rome where they actually cut a low doorway into the stone base under a window sill and used the entire height of the ground floor plus piano nobile (second, and main floor where the family lived) for the shop. More good lessons learned.
From Vicenza we headed to Verona, where we saw some more great streets, urban spaces, and lots of Juliet balconies, although at times it did feel as though we were going to be blown away by a tempest. Unfortunately, we were not to be in Mantua or the other stops because we had to race over the mountains to Lucca to avoid…you guessed it…a snowstorm. The trip is beginning to feel a bit like a comedy of errors.
Next time, we fast forward to Tuscany.
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