Today I spent in Vicenza. 20 years ago my Dad gave me a book of opera houses of the world, one of which was the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza. Google it. It's amazing! 15 years ago, I spent 5 nights in Vicenza at a chamber music festival, in part so that I could see the theatre. It was the same trip that took me for the first time to Pordenone and the silent film festival that is the focus of this trip.
The Teatro Olyimpico was designed by the 16th C. architect Palladio, along with many other buildings around Vicenza, the city with whom he is most associated. Palladio was inspired by Roman and Greek architecture, and I find his work very beautiful. So today I was off to see two villas about 3km walk out of town.
Villa Capra "La Rotonda", one of the last Pilladio creations. It is symmetrical, on all four sides, if that makes sense. Inside is a big circular hall with a dome ceiling. Very church-like.
The second, the 17th C. villa next door built for the Valmarana family and still owned by them. An old, powerful and rich family, for whom the Villa Valmarana ai Nani is still one of their homes. As a consequence, both villas only have a collection of ground floor reception rooms open to the public, as the remainder of the house is private. There is a surprising amount of 'family' in evidence in the reception rooms in addition to the frescos by Tiepolo (father and son) everyone came to see. Books and bookcases; and photos of the family from all decades of photography in frames on all available surfaces - piano, sideboards, side tables, tops of bookcases.... And not all formal either. Ski holidays, weddings, birthdays, the time the Queen Mum came to visit.... Strangely intimate and it felt voyeristic to looking at then. The 18th C. frescos couldn't compete.
"Ai Nani" named after the 2 foot high dwarves that used to be in the garden (!) and are now on top of the perimeter wall. Can't believe I didn't get a photo...
At Ai Nani, the reading matter described how the frescos were nearly removed and sent to the Italian Embassy in Paris during WWII. It then described how in 1944, the frescos actually were removed for safe keeping - luckily as it turns out, as the villa was bombed towards the end of the war and "the entrance hall suffered some damage" according to the leaflet. In a room, later on in my looking around the house, I saw a photo with "L'orrore della guerra" (the horror of war) handwritten underneath it. It was a photo of the house. The roof and second floor completely gone, and all the glass from the windows shattered. I always forget that so many 'old' buildings in Europe have in fact been reconstructed after the war.
After a lunch of some kind of air-dried meat and cheese in a toasted panino, the rain finally started to really settle in for the afternoon. I took a break at the B&B until the weather improved a bit then just wandered taking photos and looking around.
Wandering the streets of Vicenza. The old centre of town is mostly car free.
Named the 'Basilica' because it looks like one, this is actually a commercial loggia space designed for the city by Pilladio. The interior is little shops on the ground level and, these days, exhibition spaces.
