Day Six- Vicenza II

After a lovely breakfast at the hotel we said goodbye to Denise and Ali, who were heading back to rainy Munich, Ali's home town. The day before we had bought a ticket that includes most of Vicenza's museums and houses, so we stopped first at the archeological and natural history museum, which wasn't that exciting, but it was cool. Next was across the street to the Palazzo Leoni Montanari, which has a small collection of paintings in an extremely baroque plaster building built in 1678. The family, which had made fortune in textiles, wished to raise their standing in society with their extravagant house, and it shows! It has been enhanced by a number of owners along the way until now it is a riot of sculptural spaces that writhe and leap off the walls and moldings, with themes from classical mythology. Luckily it escaped damage in WWII and was opened as a gallery in 1999. It also houses one of the best museums of Russian Icons in Europe, but we kind of glided through that one.

Wild plaster work at the Palazzo Leoni Monanari in Vicenza

We decided to take a bit of a hike to check out a couple things across the river and up the hill, so we grabbed some food at the supermarket and headed down by the train station to eat it in the park. Then we packed up and set out for the Basilica di Monte Berico, which perches on a hill overlooking the town. We trudged up a steep covered arcade that has long been used by pilgrims making their way to the church, then enjoyed a birds eye view of Vicenza from what seemed very high. The church had a ceremony in progress, so we didn't stay long, but long enough to check out the beautiful scagliola work that covered much of its interior. After a gelato and and a drink, we set out to see two more houses, both somewhat outside of city limits. Turned out to be a bit more hiking than we had thought, but it was going through lovely wooded hills with giant stone walls lining a narrow street, every once in a while opening to a vista of vineyards and country houses on misty slopes. We finally arrived at one of the houses, and it was all worth it. The Villa Valmarana ai Nani is named for the dwarf statues (Ital.- "Nani") that line the garden walls and set the tone for this playful country getaway. 

View of Vicenza from Monte Berico. Palladio's basilica is the copper roof on the left side.

You really get a good sense of the house as it was due to the fact that it is fully furnished with period furniture from the time when the Valmarana family bought it (18th century) and commissioned the Tiepolos (father Giambattista and son Giandomenico) to fresco the interior. In fact the Valmarana family still occupies the house at times, on the top floor. It also has intact gardens that enhance the feeling of stepping back in time. The main house has awesome paintings by Tiepolo Sr., based on classical myths, and the large guest house is done up with murals of genre scenes and exotica by the younger Tiepolo. Both houses were very pleasant to wander through and photos, while not really allowed, were pretty easy to take. 

Fresco mural by Giandomenico Tiepolo in the guest house of the Villa Valmarana. 

It was the heat of the afternoon but we decided to forge on to one of Palladio's acknowledged masterpieces, the Villa Capra, or "La Rotonda" as it is known. Fortunately it was all downhill and the road turned into a cobbled footpath, again enhancing the feeling of being in another era. Unfortunately when we got to the Villa it only had another half hour open, but we paid the fee and went in anyways. The house was not open on that day, but it was still pretty cool to see how it was sited on a knoll overlooking the farms and rivers below, with long vistas and a cool breeze. The house, a very elegant architecture that has four symmetrical Ionic porticoes around a central dome, has been copied many times; no less than five houses in Britain are based directly on it, and Thomas Jefferson's Monticello was highly influenced by it. I'll just have to come back again to see Louis Dorigny's interior murals. Just as well we didn't get in, since my camera battery ran out as we were sitting on the steps of one of the porches. Would have been very frustrating to be inside and not be able to take a few.

Walking into the garden of the Villa Capra.

We were pretty tapped on the long hike back into town, but there were a number of great views along the way to help keep us going. Had a quiet evening of snacks and internet, with of course one more gelato and a stroll through the piazza. 

Back to filling in the blanks on our Italy trip- the date was actually June 16th

Day Five- to Vicenza!!

Vicenza was the home base for architect Andrea Palladio, and it was where he made a name for himself in 1546 when he remodeled the old gothic style civic basilica with a sharp looking classical exterior that survives to this day. Palladio's work peppers the town and flavors just about everything there, although there's plenty of other things to do and see. It is a vibrant little touristy town, but it seems to have more going on than just tourism. It's nestled up against the foothills of the Dolomites, which was what we noticed as the train from Mantova took us closer and closer to the hills. This time I remembered to leave the webpage with the map on it open on my laptop, so we had perfect directions to get to our hotel. On top of that, the hotel seemed to have a connection at city hall, as there were at least 5 signs for it on the way into the town center. We got to our place, the Hotel Due Mori, a bit early in the day, so we left our bags there and headed straight over to the piazza, which was just around the corner. 

Arcade of the Basilica of Vicenza, by Andrea Palladio. 

I recognized the basilica immediately, with it's distinctive "Palladian" windows with their little portholes flanking arches. As always, it's interesting to see how different something is from the image you have in your head. I'd looked at this building many times in photographs, but both the setting (on a sloping piazza and town) and the scale (larger than what I imagined) took me by surprise. Directly across from it is the Palazzo del Capitanio, an unfinished project that probably would have been one of Palladio's most ornate exteriors, but even in it's truncated form it's impressive. Palladio began as a mason, so he had real field experience in architecture, and many of his buildings reflect that economy of approach and materials that builders learn. Most of his columns and ornamental work is done with plaster applied over brick, so it is even more remarkable how much has survived, and in good condition generally. 

The Palazzo Capitanio is across the piazza from the Basilica, and is only a small portion of what was originally planned.

We had a little time before our friends were arriving to meet us, so we walked down a medieval street to the Teatro Olimpico, another of Palladio's projects (though it was actually finished up by his student and fellow classicist, Vicenzo Scamozzi.) We sat outside in the courtyard area to eat some snacks, then came into this amazing space, which Palladio designed to be a model of a Roman theater from antiquity. Palladio had studied well the antique styles, and was one of the first to illustrate Vitruvius' book on architecture, our only written source of information from that era. The entire interior is constructed of wood, so it smells great and has a very cool auditory aspect. The stage is not an open box, as ours are now, but a facade with openings that go up 3 stories, and includes trompe l'oeil vistas seen through the ground floor doors. The proscenium is covered with ornament and statues, just as many of the antique theaters were, the only difference being that most of the antiques were made of real marbles, and were often very colorful. In the lobby they have the original blown glass oil lamps that were used in stage productions at the time. They actually reused them in 1997 for a production of Oedipus the King, which was the first play put on there in 1585. 

Interior of the Teatro Olimpico, Palladio's interpretation of what an antique Roman theater might have looked like. The theater was completed by Palladio's protege Scamozzi.

We kept right on with our tour across the street from the theater at the Palazzo Chiericati, another Palladio project that was not finished until after he died. It is a grand town house, two stories high with lots of covered porches (loggie) on both floors. The stairwells and passages were recently replastered, giving the house an air of newly finished. Nice to see that there is excellent plastering still going on on a regular basis. They leave this type of plaster unpainted so that it can breathe. It's a beautiful finish that only improves with age. Upstairs was a small library with all kinds of books on decorative art that of course I wished i could have arranged to look through. Next time! It also had a small collection of drawings and studies by artists including Tiepolo (father and son).

Freshly plastered vaults in the Palazzo Chiericati

We then walked back up through the piazza to meet our friends Denise and Ali. Ali lives in Munich, but they were driving back up from Venice and stopped to visit with us for a night. Right as we got back to the hotel they had pulled up in their car, so we helped them unload and they went off to park the car outside of the historical center. When they got back we went out on the piazza, and they stayed out to watch a gay pride parade that was walking through town while I further immersed in Palladio at an excellent museum that had loads of wood models of his projects and some original drawings.

Wood model of the Villa Capra "La Rotonda" at the excellent Palladio museum in the  Palazzo Barbaran da Porto

We had a nice dinner near the hotel and walked out again (with gelato, of course!) The sun was setting and the basilica became this magic place, with warm light coming from within through the little round windows. There was some kind of party going on the second floor- unfortunately we weren't invited! Walked down to the Palazzo Chiericati again, which also looked wonderful against the deep blue of the twilight sky. Headed back up slowly, taking it all in, then turned it in for the night.

Palazzo Chiericati at dusk