Vicenza

Where to stay in Vicenza

On 15 December 1994 UNESCO inscribed Vicenza on the World Heritage List, and two years later extended the listing to twenty-four Palladian villas spread across six Veneto provinces. The site now takes in the historic centre with twenty-three monuments designed by Andrea Palladio and the villas of the countryside: a concentration that makes the city a unique case, where a single architect defined the appearance of an entire place.

The Teatro Olimpico

This is the work Palladio never saw finished: he died in 1580, shortly after building began, and it was Vincenzo Scamozzi who completed it. Inspired by the Roman theatres described by Vitruvius and fitted inside an existing fortress, it is the oldest surviving indoor masonry theatre. Its plain exterior makes the interior all the more startling, where the fixed stage set simulates seven streets appearing to recede into the distance through a perspective trick built with sloping floors and statues of diminishing scale.

The Basilica and the other works

Onto Piazza dei Signori faces the Basilica Palladiana, which is not religious at all: the term recalls the Roman sense of a public building. Palladio was commissioned to clad a fifteenth-century Gothic palace and applied a double order of white stone loggias, with the arched openings later known as Palladian windows. Beside it stands the Loggia del Capitaniato; a little further, Palazzo Chiericati has housed the civic museum since 1855. Outside the city, the Villa Almerico Capra, known as La Rotonda, repeats four identical façades around a domed central hall, and is perhaps the most imitated design in architectural history: open to visitors from April to November.

Where to stay and what is nearby

The historic centre is walked end to end along Corso Palladio, and the station is minutes away. Vicenza stays quieter and cheaper than Venice and Verona, reachable by train in three quarters of an hour and half an hour respectively, which makes it a sensible base for visiting both without paying their rates. Above the city, the sanctuary of Monte Berico offers the best view. Northwards open the Berici hills and the foothills with Bassano del Grappa. For more see where to stay in Vicenza; a regional overview is in where to stay in Veneto.