We know, we are incredible travel piggies, and everyone hates us!
Last March, we spent three days in Rome, three in Florence, and three in Venice. It was David's first time to Italy, and he was bitten by the Italy bug immediately! So when we got the opportunity to buy a package trip to Venice at Thanksgiving for a ridiculously low price, we jumped on it. We are leaving in two weeks and two days!!!
We have four nights in Venice at the Olimpia Hotel; then we are going to Vicenza (about 30 miles from Venice) to stay in a Palladian-syle villa and explore Palladio villas(!), and then we come back to Venice for the last night in a 15th century palace on the canal.
I know. It's tough to be us.
Itinerary
Wednesday, Nov 21 - Leave Boston at 5:55 p.m. for Milan
Thursday, Nov 22 Arrive in Milan at 7:35 a.m.; Leave Milan at 9:50 a.m.for Venice
Arrive in Venice at 10:50 a.m.
Nov. 22-25 - Olimpia Hotel, in the Santa Croce section of Venice
Nov. 26-27 - Villa Pasini, Vicenza, built in 1770
Nov. 28 - Pallazo Odoni, 15th century palace in the Santa Croce section of Venice
Thursday, Nov 29 - Leave Venice at 7:30 a.m. for Milan
Arrive in Milan at 8:30 a.m.; Leave Milan at 9:50 a.m.for Boston
Arrive in Boston at 1:15 p.m.
We were a little concerned about the weather there in November. But the forecast for the 10 day period before we arrive has daytime temps from 46-54 and night time temps from 32-38:
Venice Timeline
452:
Attila's Hun invasion. Refugees flee mainland to lagoon islands.
568:
Alboin's Lombard invasion. Mainland settlements abandoned.
The most important village in the lagoon by that time is not Venice but Torcello, where in 639 the gorgeous Cathedral was built, and where many people are seeking refuge from barbarian invasions. Step by step, Venice was built on several islands of a lagoon, then linked by bridges.
697:
First Doge elected.
810:
Settlement consolidated at Riva Alta, site of modern Venice.
814:
Construction begun on Doge's Palace in St. Mark's Square.
834:
Construction begun on the Basilica of St. Mark's. This first basilica burned down.
1000:
Venice spreads its commercial boundaries when its fleet defeats the pirates of the Adriatic sea. Venice then takes part in the Crusades, war campaigns designed to free Jerusalem. Many works of art are plundered and taken to Venice, like the four bronze horses of St. Mark's.
11th century:
St. Mark's Square was divided in half by a canal. A century later, the canal was filled in, creating the basic shape that exists today.
1204:
Constantinople captured by Venice and 4th Crusaders.
1271-1295:
The journey of the Venetian merchant Marco Polo from Venice to China, where he met with Gengis Khan.
1296:
The glassblowers of Venice moved to the island of Murano.
1348:
Half the population of Venice dies in the plague.
1492:
Columbus discovers America.
1725:
Casanova is born in Venice.
1538-1580:
The period of Palladio's villas.
1720:
Caffè Florian opened for business, and has been a hangout for the likes of Byron, Balzac, and Henry James.
1797:
Napoleon's French invasion of Venice end's the city's 1100 years of independence when Venice becomes part of the Hapsburg empire (Austria).
1866:
Venice joins Italy after the third independence war.
1902:
The bell tower in St. Mark's Square collapses. It was rebuilt in 1912.1996:
La Fenice destroyed by fire. Rebuilt and reopened in 2004.
Here are the hotels we are staying in, with some text right from their own websites - notice the interesting translations into English!
Nov. 22-25 - Four nights in the Hotel Olimpia in Venice
hotel website
The Hotel Olimpia boasts a central position in the ever-romantic mystic Venice alongside a typical living canal. The hotel is close to the Basilica dei Frari (the School of San Rocco) and few minutes walk from the Grand Canal.
From Piazzale Roma, head towards Tre Ponti and you will see the hotel.
The hotel has recently entailed in a renovation overhaul making our services more inviting: reading/relax room, American style bar, Internet point and nice garden, a real bonus for venetian standard.
The breakfast room has wall-to-wall windows facing into one of the typical canals. The bedrooms are all decorated in a typical venetian style dating back to the early 18th century complete with private bath/shower room, hairdryer, air conditioning, telephone, satellite television, radio and minibar.
Nov. 26-27 - Two nights in the Villa Pasini Canera di Salasco in Vicenza (1770)
hotel website
The Villa Pasini is one of the beautiful Palladian-style villas that enrich the Veneto countryside. Villa Pasini is only a few kilometers from the town of Vicenza, a location is ideal for touring the beautiful cities of Vicenza, Padova, Venice, and Verona, as well as many small towns that you may not be familiar with, that will surprise you with their beauty and charm.
The Villa Pasini Canera di Salasco was built in 1770 as the country residence for the Franceschini family, silk manufacturers from Vicenza . The architect, Ottavio Bertotti-Scamozzi (1719–90), was a doyen of the
The rooms, three deluxe suites, are in a courtyard on the property of this important villa, with access to a beautiful park where you can walk among the vineyards and enjoy the views of the surrounding Berici hills. Wine and olive oil are produced from the property's vineyards and olive trees.
The villa is composed of the main residence, noted for it's interesting facade, closed ground floor and magnificent second and third floor with Palladian style columns and a glass closure. There are also two greenhouses that have been transformed into living and working spaces. The deconsecrated church behind the villa is also used as a private home.
.
Nov. 28 - Our last night: Palazzo Odoni - a Gothic XV century palace in Venice
hotel website
Situated in the historical centre of Venice, just few steps far from the Basilica of the Frari, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, and the XVII century Museum of Cà Rezzonico, Odoni Palace is just few minutes by foot from Rialto, San Marco, the railway station and car terminal of Piazzale Roma.
The palace is named after one of its first residents, Andrea Odoni, famous 16th century art and antiques collector. Odoni is named in the town archives for friendships that joined him to famous artists like Treviso, and famous architects Serlio. Treviso completed an oil painting with Odoni image conserved today in London (Royal Collection Hampton Court); and Serlio designed the first "Serliana" (Palladian window) in Venice in the north wall of the palace. (A Palladian window has a central arched section flanked by two narrow rectangular sections.)
The owner family have lived in the palace since five generations. Current owners Alessandra Giangreco and Alessandro Fabris set energies and personal taste in the renovation of the place to assure high quality standard. All comforts, spaces and well-lighted rooms and suite are added to a refined furniture of the XIX century, tapestry of the Rubelli collection, and an ancient illumination in Murano glass.
All the rooms at Palazzo Odoni are very bright, decorated in traditional venetian style, furnished with authentic antique venetian pieces, with great attention to details and located in an absolute silent position.
In Venice, we have several things we want to do.Campanile
We want to go up the Campanile, a 325-foot guard tower from the 8th century that was rebuilt after a sudden collapse in 1902.
Originally built as a lighthouse to assist navigation in the lagoon, visitors can be whisked by elevator to the top of St. Mark's Campanile to savor incredible views of Venice, the lagoon and the Alps in the distance. Venetians called it "El paron de casa" (the lord of the house).
You can take an elevator to the top for a great view of the city and the lagoon. The Campanile received an overhaul in the early 1500s after being damaged by an earthquake, giving it the profile that we see today. It also received its share of historic visitors, including Galileo (who showed the Doge his famous telescope in 1609), Goethe (who viewed the Adriatic from the arched windows), and Emperor Frederick III of the Holy Roman Empire, who is said to have ridden his horse up the tower in 1452.Inside the bell tower there are 5 large cast iron bells. Each bell has a name and a purpose; The largest Marangona rang mornings and evenings at the beginning and end of the work day, the smallest--il Maleficio-- rang for capital executions, Nona rang at the 9th hour, Trottiera called magistrates to meetings in the Palazzo Ducale, and the bell of Pregadi called senators to the Palace.
The bells are still rung today, but only to maintain tradition and entertain the tourists.
Clock Tower
We want to check out the clock tower in St. Mark's which has been ringing out the hours since 1499.
Finally, in 2005, the Clock Tower was reopened to the public after a lengthy restoration project, which was supposed to finish in time for the 500-year anniversary of its construction. The Renaissance tower was built in 1496, and the clock mechanism of that same period still keeps perfect time.The clock tower is topped by a large bell, which is struck every hour by two large bronze figures, known as "Moors" because of the dark color of the bronze. (THE MOOPS!!!!!) The bronze Moors were cast by Paolo Ranieri (1494-97). A recent theory is that they were intended as Cain and Abel. The statues are cast in two parts, and the clock's mechanism moves their upper bodies as they ring the bell.
The tower is an elaborate affair, with complicated systems for displaying the time, the sun, the moon and the signs of the zodiac. Before the 18th century the face of the clock also showed the planets revolving around the Earth.
Above the blue clock face, a statue of the Madonna stands between two large displays showing the time to the nearest five minutes in numerals. During the tour, you should be able to see the 'minutes' display changing from the inside as a large painted barrel revolves.
On Epiphany (January 6) and during Ascension Week (40 days after Easter), you'll witness the clock's star turn - these numerals disappear and are replaced by doorways through which moving statues of the Magi led by an angel appear on the hour to worship Mary and Christ. The rest of the year the wooden statues are stored inside the tower, waiting for engineers to come and attach them to their conveyor belt.
The tower's inscription is horas non numero nisi serenas ("I only count happy hours"). You can visit the famous three wise men on the ground floor of Palazzo Ducale where parts of the clock are on display.
The top story is decorated with a carved winged lion - there used to be a doge in the adjacent space, but the relief was removed when the doges lost their authority.
Although you're not permitted to ascend the tower while the bell is ringing, you can get a closer look at the stationary statues from the terrace on top of the Torre dell'Orologio. You'll be given plenty of time up here to admire the superb views over Venice's rooftops, St. Mark's Square and, on a clear day, to the edges of the lagoon and even the mountains. Useful signs identify the city's landmark churches and towers.
Guided tours take place in English, Italian and French. There are only a few tours a day in each language, and places on the tours are very limited so it's a good idea to book ahead.
You can book at the ticket desk of Museo Correr, at the other end of St. Mark's Square. This is also the meeting point before the tour, which lasts approximately 45 minutes. Spaces in the tower are small, and some of the spiral stairs are very narrow - the museum warns the infirm, unfit or pregnant not to attempt the tour. Big bags are also not a good idea.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: 10 am and 11 am;
Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 1pm, 2pm, 3pm and 5pm
Ticket - Full Price
12 euro (including booking fee and expert guide)
Holders of this ticket get free admission to the Correr Museum, the State Rooms of the Biblioteca Marciana and the National Archaelogical Museum.
Correr Civic Museum (Museo Civico Correr)
Civic museum of Venice that opened in 1923, which houses a major art gallery and superb collections of objects-d'art, historic memorabilia and documents regarding the fascinating history of the Venetian Republic. This museum traces the development of Venetian painting from the 14th to the 16th centuries.
This museum, which you enter through an arcade at the west end of Piazza San Marco opposite the basilica, is no match for the Accademia but does include some interesting paintings of Venetian life, and a fine collection of artifacts, such as coins, costumes, the doges' ceremonial robes and hats, and an incredible pair of 15-inch platform shoes, that gives an interesting feel for aspects of the day-to-day life in La Serenissima in the heyday of its glory.
Bequeathed to the city by the aristocratic Correr family in 1830, the museum is divided into three sections: the Painting Section, the History Section, and the Museum of the Risorgimento (1797-1866). The latter two aren't worth much mention. Of the painting collection from the 13th to 18th centuries, Vittorio Carpaccio's Le Cortigiane (The Courtesans), in room no. 15 on the upper floor, is one of the museum's most famous paintings, depicting two Venetian Ladies, although their true gender is a subject of much debate. Most of the rooms have a sign with a few paragraphs in English explaining the significance of the contents.
On the second floor are the red-and-maroon robes once worn by the doges, plus some fabulous street lanterns and an illustrated copy of Marco Polo in Tartaria. You can see Cosmà Tura's Pietà, a miniature of renown and a gruesome work, depicting a bony, gnarled Christ sprawled on the lap of the Madonna. Farther on, search out Schiavone's Madonna and Child (no. 545), the ugliest bambino ever depicted on canvas (no wonder his mother looks askance).
One of the most important rooms boasts three masterpieces: a Pietà by Antonello da Messina, a Crucifixion by Flemish Hugo van der Goes, and a Madonna and Child by Dieric Bouts, who depicted the baby suckling at his mother's breast in a sensual manner. The star attraction of the Correr is the Bellini salon, which includes works by founding padre Jacopo and his son, Gentile. But the real master of the household was the other son, Giovanni, the major painter of the 15th-century Venetian school (look for his Crucifixion and compare it with his father's treatment of the same subject).
Scuola San Rocco (School of San Rocco)
Here you will find some of the beautiful works from the painter Tintoretto. His epic canvasses are filled with phantasmagoric light and intense, mystical spirituality. This museum is a dazzling monument to his work — it holds the largest collection of his images anywhere.
Venice has abundant art treasures. Many cover the walls of the city's fine gallery, the Accademia, but the best remain in the places they were painted for: the churches and palaces of the Renaissance. The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most spectacular, showing masterpieces in their original home.
Neither Titian nor Bellini in the Frari, the building around the corner, can prepare you for the savage intensity of the Tintorettos that cover the walls of the Scuola di San Rocco. Where Titian is sublime and Bellini serene, Tintoretto is somehow the most moving. From 1564 to 1587 the artist covered the two floors of this building with one of the most important Italian painting cycles ever painted. It tells the story of the Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and a host of other Biblical stories. They line the walls of the huge ground floor room you first pass through and are even richer in the upper hall at the top of the grand staircase you then climb.
The emotional effect of the artwork of the Frari Church and the Scuola di San Rocco is to transport the modern viewer back to the world of the people who first saw these paintings. Appreciating these pictures is today, as it was 500 years ago, a deeply spiritual experience.
This series of the more than 50 dark and dramatic works here took the artist more than 20 years to complete, making this the richest of the many scuole that once flourished in Venice.
Begin upstairs in the Sala dell'Albergo, where the most notable of the enormous, powerful canvases is the moving (The Crucifixion). In the center of the gilt ceiling of the great hall, also upstairs, is (The Bronze Snake). Among the eight huge, sweeping paintings downstairs — each depicting a scene from the New Testament — (The Slaughter of the Innocents) is the most noteworthy, so full of dramatic urgency and energy that the figures seem almost to tumble out of the frame. As you enter the room, it's on the opposite wall at the far end of the room.
There's a useful guide to the paintings posted inside on the wall just before the entrance to the museum. There are a few Tiepolos among the paintings, as well as a solitary work by Titian. The works on or near the staircase are not by Tintoretto.
Tourist reviews
GO!!! Even if you're not a fan of Tintoretto, go for the STUNNING wood carvings alone. I was there for an hour and a half this week, and there were never more than four other people in the place, totally incomprehensible as it is certainly a must-see.
I tell anyone who is touring Venice to visit Scuola Of St Rocca. Only for a local introducing me to this part of Venice, I may have left not discovering this. Wonderful.
Feast of Santa Maria della Salute
I'm disappointed that we will miss (by ONE STINKING DAY) the feast of Santa Maria della Salute. On November 21 of each year, city workers lay a pontoon bridge over the Grand Canal from the San Marco district to the Salute church. The huge main doors of the basilica are opened, and Venetians walk across the canal to pay their respects to the Virgin Mary or--at the very least--to tradition. Gondoliers bring their oars to be blessed by a priest who recites his incantations from the church steps.
Back in 1630, Venetians were dying by the thousands in a plague epidemic. The city fathers prayed for divine intervention, promising to build a church in honor of the Virgin Mary if God would switch off the plague. Within weeks, the epidemic faded away, and the massive Santa Maria della Salute Church was built to fulfill the Venetians' side of the bargain. Today, more than 375 years later, city workers still lay a footbridge built on pontoon boats across the Grand Canal every November 21. The bridge leads from the San Marco quarter to the steps of the Salute Church, where the main doors are opened--as they are just once a year--to receive the masses for mass. The faithful light candles in front of the church, while Catholics and heathen tourists alike enjoy mutton and frittele veneziana (fritters stuffed with pine nuts or raisins) during this very popular festival.
That being said, I'd still like to see the church.
The exterior is a glorious confection in white: its fanciness not overpowering but suiting the location. The large stone scrolls buttressing the dome were an inspired touch. Inside, six side-chapels and the high altar open off the main space. The small side chapels contain paintings by Luca Giordano and one by Titian. The most interesting feature of the interior though, is its design and dramatic spaces.
Some of the church's finer paintings are kept in the sacristy: follow signs to the (sagrestia) which is reached via a narrow passageway by the Titian painting in the main church. Entrance costs €1.50 which art-lovers will find worth paying. One of the highlights is Tintoretto's Nozze di Cana with its lovely light treatment of ladies with elegant braided fair hair. Another Titian hangs over the altar: a plague-referencing study of saints standing around for a chat in their identifying 'regalia': Sebastian in his loincloth with an arrow protruding from his ribcage; Rocco (Roch) with his bleeding plague sore; and doctors Cosmo and Damiano holding ointments and apparently discussing treatments. Above them Saint Mark is enthroned and looking aloof. There are more works by Titian on the ceiling; three Old Testament scenes (mirrors are provided to help visitors get a better view without craning their necks).
Chiesa de San Giacomo di Rialto
Thought to be the oldest church in Venice (5th century), located in the San Polo where the ancient beginnings of Venice are found, at the Rialto when in 421 the city was founded. The same day the population began the construction of this Church.
Do make this historic church part of your Rialto tour, as it's one of the oldest, if not the oldest, in Venice. It has undergone renovations, but some of the oldest components are the six marble columns inside. Look for the inscription on the exterior apse that admonishes merchants to be just in their business practices. Above the tribunal, near the main entrance, are an extraordinary 24-hour clock and the original porch.
Search out the hunchback holding up the stairway to the Pietra di Bando, from which laws and prohibitions were once decreed.
Chiesa di Madonna dell'Orto
Madonna dell'Orto is a church and a parish that most Venice tourists never see. Tintoretto lived and worked just a few blocks away on the Fondamenta dei Mori; this was his parish church, and he is buried here.
The charming noble brick facade and graceful interior of this church (dating from 1462) represents a blend of Gothic and Renaissance. It is rich in Tintoretto's works, which draw most visitors out to this northern reach of the city. On either side of the high altar there are vast paintings of The Worship of the Golden Calf and The Last Judgment, each about 50 feet high. Tintoretto, his fingers itching to fill the empty spaces on these chancel walls, is said to have asked no recompense other than the cost of the materials. In the interior is his tomb; he was buried in 1594 in the chapel to the right of the Presbytery next to his son Domenico.
Other notable features of the church include a statue of a "Madonna of the Garden" (Madonno dell'Orto) in the chapel of San Mauro, which was discovered in a neighboring garden in the late 1300s and was said to possess miraculous powers. The statue served as an excuse to renovate the church, which originally was dedicated to St. Christopher. It has been used as a gunpowder magazine, a barn for storing straw, and a stable at various times in its nearly 650 years of existence.
Scala Contarini del Bovolo
It may seem slightly odd for a staircase to be a tourist attraction, but in Venice all things are possible. This external spiral staircase is an attractive architectural curiosity which merits a visit.
In 2007 the staircase is closed to the public while restoration works take place. However, when we last checked the building could still be admired from outside.
'Scala Contarini' simply means staircase of the Contarini family, while 'bovolo' is a Venetian word for snail and describes the spiral form. With Venetian carelessness over names, it's also called the Scala del Bovolo, Palazzo Contarini.
The staircase and the loggia which adjoins it on the right were designed around 1499 by Giovanni Candi, who employed a mixture of Renaissance, Gothic and Byzantine styles to create a novel and pretty extension to the Gothic palace behind. External staircases rising from courtyards were a feature of the medieval city, and you can still see other examples around Venice. But none were this flamboyant. Rising from a small square, it comes as a surprise after the narrow approaches - try leading a friend here unaware and appreciate their reaction.
The staircase is in the San Marco district and its address is San Marco 4299, which of course is no help in finding the location. Its courtyard is called Corte dei Risi or Corte del Bovolo. The best way to get there is to find Campo Manin, south-west of the Rialto, where you'll find a small sign to the staircase.
Near Campo San Bortolo and close to Campo Manin, hidden among a labyrinth of alleyways.Basilica di Santi Giovanni e Paolo
The Basilica di San Giovanni e Paolo, run together by the Venetian dialect into San Zanipolo, is one of the largest churches of Venice and has the status of a minor basilica. A huge Gothic brick edifice, it is the Dominican church of Venice, and as such was built for preaching to large congregations.
It was built starting in 1246, when Doge Giacomo Tiepolo donated land to the Dominicans after dreaming of white doves flying over it. The first church was demolished in 1333, when the current church was begun, and it was completed in 1430.
The vast interior contains a foot of St Catherine of Siena, the church's chief relic; many funerary monuments & paintings; the Madonna della Pace, a miraculous Byzantine statue situated in its own chapel.
EatingAll these wonderful dishes must be accompanied by Venetian wines: Prosecco di Conegliano,Valpolicella, Bianco di Custoza and Amarone. Finally, after the meal we recommend you try a sgroppino (lemon sorbet and prosecco) or a small glass of Bassano Grappa. However, first you must try some typical Venetian sweets such as zaeti, biscuits prepared with polenta flour and raisins and bussolai buranelli, butter biscuits made in a round shape that are wonderful when dunked in sweet Vin Santo.
If you want a place that is full of life, go to the Campo Santa Margherita area that is the artists’ area, and also the Ghetto, especially the nearby Fondamenta della Misericordia where there are ethnic restaurants, bars and historical night clubs such as “Paradiso Perduto”.
restaurantsCantinone Vini al Bottegon: A wine bar with delectable crostini such as mild goat cheese with candied walnuts and tiny red berries served with fragolino or a spritz! Just a stroll away is our favorite (found here in Chow! Venice) is Traverna San Trovaso.We were so happy to find this welcoming restaurant,popular with locals and tourists alike. The food was delicious,the prices fair, the atmosphere convivial and Venetian. Thank you Chow! Venice!!!!
One of my favorite restaurants is close to you - if you like wonderful food at a reasonable price, check out
Osteria da Alberto. I adore the place, but you have to make a rezzie for dinner.
Try to get cichetti at Alla Botte - also Un Mondo di Vino - both close to you. And the people at > Enoteca Mai Tardi are wonderful. The Best Pizza Ever is Casa Mia. All these places are super close to
your hotel!
Have a fantastic time! If you love pizza, like I do, there is some kick-ass pizza in Florence at Il Pizzaiuola close > to Piazza San Ambrogio on Via Macci (I think.)
At Giorgione (via Garibaldi 1533, 041 522 8727, closed Wed), in the depths of Castello, owner Lucio sings his heart out most nights.When drinking is more important than eating, locals dive into a bacaro, the wine-only Venetian equivalent of a pub, where a series of little snacks (tapas-like cichètti) are on offer to patrons. A good choice is Osteria alla Botte (campo San Bartolomeo, San Marco, 041 520 9775).
Jewish Ghetto
Dating back to the 16th-century, this is the oldest Jewish Ghetto in the world with its five synagogues, which are the oldest still existing. (Ghetto Ebraico di Venezia)
The Jewish Ghetto remains intact and is still marked by dark porticos, peeling paint, laundry hung out to dry, and windows placed so close above one another that you're back aches just thinking about the low ceiling.
Until the 14th century, Jews were allowed to come to Venice for money-lending activities, but were not allowed permanent residents permits. The first Jews were allowed to settle in Venice only in 1385. But racism persisted, and in 1516 Venice's ruling council confined all the Jews in a smallen getti, or foundries. The gates were locked at night, and restrictions were placed on Jewish economic activities. Jews were only allowed to operate pawn shops and lend money, trade in textiles, and practice medicine. They were allowed to leave the Ghetto during the day, but were marked as Jews: Men wore a yellow circle stitched on the left shoulder of their cloaks or jackets, while women wore a yellow scarf.
The first Jews to settle in the Ghetto were the central European Ashkenazim. They built two Synagogues. the Scola Grande Tedesca in 1528-29 and the Scola Canton in 1531-32. They are on the top floors of adjacent buildings, above the Jewish museum and from the outside, are not easily distinguishable from the apartments around them. Space was limited, and according to Jewish law it is forbidden to have any thing between the Synagogue and the sky - hence their strange attic location.
Next came the Levantine Jews, who practiced the Sepharadic rite. When they got their own neighbourhood, an extension of the Venetian Ghetto granted in 1541, they were wealthy enough to build a Synagogue on the ground, rather than in cramped top floor apartments. The rich red and gold interior of the Levantine Synagogue is particularly beautiful. If you get to see it, note the intricately carved wooden bimah, or pulpit, and the carved wooden decorations on the ceiling.
Mixed in with the poorer Ashkenazim were Italian Jews who had migrated north to Venice from central and southern Italy. In 1575, they built their own Synagogue on top of some apartments in the same square as the German shul. The Scola Italiana has a cupola, barely visible from the square outside, and a portico with columns marking it's entrance. Inside, there's another exquisitely carved wooden ark of the covenant, housing the Torah.
Napoleon threw open the gates in 1797 and recognized equal rights to the Jews of Venice. At its height, around 1650, the Ghetto housed about 4,000 people in a space roughly equivalent to 2-1/2 city blocks. Before World War II there were still about 1,300 Jews in the Ghetto, but 289 were deported by the Nazis and only seven returned.
We also want to visit the islands of the Venetian Lagoon.
San Michele, the walled cemetery island of Venice.
(Take the No. 41 or 42 motoscafo from the Fondamenta Nove water bus stop on the northern edge of the historic center. The ride to the Cimitero stop takes only six minutes.)
| In a city where the water table lies almost at ground level (and sometimes above), disposing of the dead has never been as simple as digging a grave and covering the body or coffin with dirt. And in Venice, a city with limited real estate, just finding enough room for departed citizens has always been a challenge. After the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, the Napoleonic authorities decreed that bodies would no longer be buried within the historic center. Instead, the dead were dispatched to a new walled cemetery on the island of San Michele, which is within a gondola's rowing distance of the city's northern waterfront. The island has tall cypress trees and a 15th century church with a cloister that leads to the cemetery proper. Most of the shallow graves that you see are occupied for just 10-12 years; after that, the graves are excavated and the bones are transferred in boxes to mausoleum niches or dumped into a communal ossuary. We want to see the Protestant and Orthodox cemeteries, which are less formal and more neglected than the Catholic sections. There are graves of 19th and 20th century foreigners, including celebrities like Ezra Pound, Serge Diaghilev (whose grave is normally decorated with a ballet slipper), and Igor Stravinsky. San Michele: The Church and Cappella EmilianiThere are two churches on the island, the large San Michele in Isola and the smaller San Cristoforo. San Michele was designed by Mauro Codussi in the 1460s and was one of the earliest Renaissance churches in Venice, with a white facade of Istrian marble overlooking the lagoon. The church's opening hours are restricted, and may be shortened still further if services are taking place. It's worth timing your visit accordingly, not just to see the church, but also for the chance to view the interior of the lovely adjoining Cappella Emiliani, which can be admired through a doorway at the back of the church. This chapel, perched on the edge of the lagoon, can also be admired from the flood-prone terrace outside, and from passing ferries. Seaweed on the paving around it demonstrates how dangerous its waterside position is, although metal barriers protect it from some of the wash from passing boats. Recently the building was restored by the British organisation Venice in Peril, and now it gleams like new. The gravesThe cemetery is divided up into many sections, and without a map it is a very confusing site. Signs will conduct visitors to the Orthodox and Protestant cemeteries; other sections are harder to locate. Wandering around can be an interesting and touching experience. One area is given over to the humble memorials of nuns and the sometimes less humble graves of priests. According to the Time Out guidebook, there is a section for gondoliers, although we haven't yet found this. Many of the recent graves seem very kitsch and strange to foreign eyes - some decorated with sad photographs of the dead and with ornaments, doilies and toys. The Orthodox area is a charming walled garden which traps late sunlight and crawls with lizards. Against the far wall visitors will find the tombs of Sergei Diaghilev and Igor Stravinsky, festooned with the offerings of ballet and music-lovers. Other graves around the walls are also fascinating, bearing testament to the lives of exiles in Venice of days gone by - Russian princesses and counts, for example. Ezra Pound is buried in the Protestant section - his tomb is hard to spot; it's to the left of the central path and resembles a flowerbed. Murano From the Cimitero Actv platform on San Michele, catch the next boat that's headed in the direction of Murano. (You'll see it coming from Venice's Fondamenta Nove.) On Murano, you'll have a choice of boat stops; I'd suggest getting off at Colonna or Faro and following the canals to the center. Murano is a small island, and it's hard to get lost. If you're in a hurry and just want to see the Glass Museum and the Basilica, stay on the boat until either Navagero or Museo. It's only a few minutes from Murano to any of the stops. | ||||||||||||
| Murano, known for its glassmaking, Glass Museum, and several historic churches. Attractions on the island include the Church of Santa Maria e San Donato, known for its 12th century Byzantine mosaic pavement and said to house the bones of the dragon slain by Saint Donatus, the Church of San Pietro Martire, and the Palazzo da Mula. Glass-related attractions include the many glassworks, some Mediaeval and most open to the public, and the Glass Museum, housed in the large Palazzo Giustinian. Glass has been made on the islands of the Venetian Lagoon for at least 1300 years. The industry had its beginnings on Torcello in the 7th or 8th century; production later shifted to Venice, where it remained concentrated until the fornaci or furnaces were moved to the island of Murano as a fire-prevention measure in 1291. To see the history and art of glassmaking, we will spend an hour at the Museo Vetraio or Glass Museum in the center of the island. Murano also has two historic churches that are well worth visiting (especially the Basilica di Santi Maria e Donato with its beautiful mosaics). Most of the eager tourists piling off the vaporetto from Venice are just looking for glass-shopping opportunities. But Murano has some picturesque canals and two churches which deserve a visit. The shore alongside Murano's lighthouse, the Faro, is a nice calm place to sit and relax. Away from the large canals, much of Murano is quite drab, although there are one or two smart villas, presumably belonging to successful glass-making families. The contrast between the residential areas and the tourist streets is striking, but unless you have masses of time, it's not really worth wandering far. The island's greatest architectural treat is the lovely 12th-century Veneto-Byzantine Basilica dei Santi Maria e Donato, just past the glass museum on Fondamenta San Giustinian. It's open from 8:30am to 12 noon and from 4pm until 6pm (closed Sunday mornings); try to visit Murano when the church is open. There's an entry charge. Inside is a lovely coloured mosaic floor, and dominating the church is a grand Byzantine mosaic in the apse, portraying the Madonna against a gold background. As well as the remains of St. Donato, the church also supposedly possesses the bones of the dragon he killed with his holy spit. Murano's other important church is San Pietro Martire, which has several significant artworks including a painting by Giovanni Bellini of the Virgin and saints.
Burano Known for its brightly colored houses and for its lace, the island of Burano is a treat for the senses. Board the Faro stop on Murano. From Faro, it's a 33-minute trip to Burano. | ||||||||||||
| Burano, an island of fishermen, lacemakers, and colorfully painted houses. The island of Burano lies in the northern part of the Venetian Lagoon, about 40 minutes from Venice by motorboat. It has a much different atmosphere from Murano or Venice's historic center, thanks to the Buranese custom of painting houses in bright colors--a tradition that may have had its origins in the color schemes of local fishing boats. Everywhere you look, you'll see houses clad in blue, green, pink, rose, lavender, purple, yellow, and other colors. And because Burano's houses tend to be small, the island has a cheerful coziness. Fishing is one traditional occupation of the Buranelli; the other is lacemaking, which is described on the History of the Burano Lace page at Martina Lace's Web site. A "must see" attraction on Burano is the Museo del Merletto, or Lace Museum, in the old Scuola di Merletti or lacemaking school. The small two-story museum has impressive displays of historic and contemporary lace designs. If you're lucky, you'll find a group of Buranese women (mostly older ladies) wielding their needles in a sewing circle upstairs, near the display of traditional lacemaking implements. Admission is free to holders of the Venice Card. (Closed Tuesdays.) Roman Catholics and lovers of solitude may enjoy a side trip to the monastery island of San Francesco del Deserto, where the nine Franciscan monks welcome visitors from 9-10 a.m. and 3-5 p.m. daily. The island is 20 minutes by rowboat from the Burano waterfront. (A gondolier does the rowing.) | ||||||||||||
| Torcello From the Actv pier on Burano, take the T boat to Torcello. The large vaporetto-style boat runs twice an hour and takes only five minutes to cross the narrow strip of water between the islands. | ||||||||||||
| Torcello is the most intriguing and the most atmospheric of the islands in the Venetian lagoon, once a city larger than Venice; today, a bucolic island with a 1,000-year-old cathedral and a handful of outdoor restaurants. There was a time, nearly 1,500 years ago, when Torcello was the largest and most important settlement in the Venetian Lagoon. Those days are long gone: As silt from rivers on the mainland filled up the shallow waters around Torcello, trade became more difficult and malarial mosquitoes bred. The 20,000 or so inhabitants gradually made their way to Venice, and today only a few dozen innkeepers, farmers, and other hardy souls live on the largely abandoned island. In the dusty piazza stands one of the most impressive and interesting churches in the Venice area, the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta. Founded in the seventh century, today's cathedral mostly dates to an eleventh-century reconstruction. A section of the earlier mosaic floor can be viewed through a glass panel. On the walls and apse are some fantastic mosaics which would make the trip worthwhile on their own: a lovely Madonna and Child on a gold background, and a scary depiction of the Last Judgement with details such as serpents crawling through skulls. Basilica of Santa Maria AssuntaThis cathedral was first built in the 7th century and it was remodeled in the first years of the 11th century; the mosaics were added a little later. The basilica has long been threatened by rising damp which had resulted in the loosening and deterioration of individual tesserae. A concerted international effort to study and cure this problem was made between 1975 and 1985. Contributions came from 12 countries, including Britain, France, Germany, Italy and the United States. The Church of Santa Fosca, next door, is very different but also lovely. The small church, which also dates to the eleventh century, is built to a Greek-cross plan and fronted by a later portico. The campanile (belltower) of the basilica is a steep climb up sloping ramps, but the view over the island and lagoon is worth the effort, even if your legs ache afterwards. The museum over the square is also worth visiting; it has a small collection of archaeological finds and historical items from the cathedral, the lagoon and the surrounding area. Each individual attraction costs €3 at the time of writing. You can buy a combined ticket for the museum, basilica and campanile for €8. Those with a fear of heights can pay for the museum and basilica for €5.50. The museum is open 10am-5pm (November-February), and is closed Mondays and public holidays. The churches and belltower have roughly the same opening hours: arriving any day between 10:30am and 4pm should find them all open. Allow 45 minutes or an hour to visit the religious buildings around the central piazza, which is a short walk along a canal from the Actv pier. Tickets are sold individually for the Basilica, the Bell Tower, and the small Archaeological Museum, but the best deal is a combination ticket that includes all three plus the use of an audioguide in the Basilica (still called the "Cathedral" by many, and still in use for weddings and religious festivals). Lido From Torcello, you'll take the T vaporetto back to the Actv pier on Burano. You'll then have several transportation choices:
If you prefer to visit Lido directly from Venice, you have a number of choices--including the No. 1 vaporetto, the 51/52 and 61 circolare routes, the double-deck LN boats that depart from a pier near San Marco. | ||||||||||||
| The Lido di Venezia, a beach resort on the strip of land that separates the Venetian Lagoon from the Adriatic Sea. The Lido is a long, narrow island that acts as a barrier between the Venetian Lagoon and the sea. Much of the island is taken up by 19th and 20th Century villas, some of which have been converted to hotels. Well-groomed beaches cater to summer holiday crowds and guests of luxury hotels on the side that faces the Adriatic. When you arrive at the Lido's Actv station, cross the street carefully and continue into the main shopping area. Here, you'll find a small department store, boutiques, cafés with gelato counters, and restaurants. The business district feels lively and prosperous, thanks to tourists in the summer and a year-round population of suburban commuters. Keep walking down the main shopping street, the Gran Viale S.M. Elisabetta. In a few minutes you'll reach the promenade on the Adriatic side of the island. To your right are the Hotel des Bains (the setting of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice), the neo-Moorish Hotel Excelsior, and the Palazzo del Cinema (used by the Venice International Film Festival). To your left are the Bagni Communale, or public beach with bathhouses for day visitors and residents. Walk along the beaches in either direction, and wander out on one of the massive stone jetties that help to protect the beaches from erosion. After you've explored the Lido, head for the Actv station at the lagoon end of the Grand Viale shopping street. Take one of the following boats:
| ||||||||||||
Still, it's obvious even from the Burano waterfront that Torcello is worth a visit: A magnificent Byzantine-Italian cathedral dating back to 639 A.D., the Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, looms over the island with the Bell Tower and Church of Santa Fosca alongside.
Don't let claustrophobia or a fear of steep stairs keep you from ascending the Bell Tower: The climb is easy, via a series of gentle well-lit ramps, and from the top you'll get a fine view of the church buildings, the island, and the Lagoon.On our way to Vicenza, we want to stop at Padua, just 15 minutes away.
Padua's colonnaded old town hides cultural treasures that hold their own in Italy's artistic big league, such as the Scrovegni Chapel and the Basilica of St. Anthony.
Scrovegni Chapel
The Scrovegni Chapel is Padua's most famous sight.
The glorious, recently renovated Scrovegni Chapel is wallpapered with Giotto's beautifully preserved cycle of 38 frescoes depicting scenes from the lives of Jesus and Mary. Finished in 1305, it's considered by many to be the first piece of modern art -- a sign that Europe was breaking out of the Middle Ages. Giotto placed real people in real scenes, expressing real human emotions.
We have tickets to the Scrovegni Chapel:
Monday, Nov. 26 at 1 p.m.
It houses a remarkable cycle of frescoes completed in 1305 by Giotto. It was Commissioned by Enrico degli Scrovegni, a wealthy banker, as a private chapel once attached to his family's palazzo. It stands on the site of a Roman-era arena. The fresco cycle details the life of the Virgin Mary and has been acknowledged by many to be one of the most important fresco cycles in the world.
Entrance to the chapel is an elaborate ordeal, as it involves spending 15 minutes prior to entrance in a climate-controlled, airlocked vault, used to stabilize the temperature between the outside world and the inside of the chapel. This is to improve preservation.
To protect the paintings from excess humidity, only 25 people are allowed inside the chapel at a time. Reservations are obligatory (www.cappelladegliscrovegni.it
). At your appointed time, you enter an anteroom to watch a video before enjoying 15 minutes in Giotto's unforgettable chapel.
Basilica of St. Anthony
St. Anthony died in 1231, and the Basilica built 1238-1310. The Baroque Treasury Chapel of the Relics was built in 1691. The architecture transforms into triumph, beginning with the balustrade and six marble statues, behind which there is the walkway that allows visitors to admire the "treasure"- reliquaries in three distinct niches. The entire scene is crowned by celebrating angels. In the central niche, there is the Saint’s tongue, inexplicably intact; a gilded silver masterpiece (1434) contains the relic of the lower jaw, in a case shaped like a bust, with a halo and crystal glass where the face should be; and the cartilage of the larynx is still incorrupt.
In 1981, on the 750th anniversary of the death of Saint Anthony, with the intention of specifying the exact scientific state of his mortal remains, St. Anthony's tomb was opened for the 2nd time in history. Inside was: the entire skeleton, apart from the jaw, left forearm and other minor parts; the tunic, made from ash-colored wool; a plaque with the date of death, his canonization and transfer of his remains to the Basilica in 1263.
The chapel of the black Madonna - What remains of the early church of St. Maria Mater Domini is here. St. Anthony's dying wish was that he be buried here. His remains stayed here until 1263. The statue of the Black Madonna was completed in 1396.
The chapel of the tomb of Saint Anthony - The Saint’s tomb, called the “Ark,” is in the altar in this chapel, at head height. It has remained in this chapel from 1350.
The popular St. Anthony is patron saint of travelers, amputees, donkeys, pregnant women, barren women, stewardesses and pig farmers. Most of them ask for his help as the "finder of things," from misplaced car keys to a life companion. A steady progression of pilgrims, who believe Anthony is their protector -- a confidant and intercessor of the poor -- shuffle past his ornate tomb, then his "uncorrupted tongue," praying for help or giving thanks for miracles they believe he's performed.
Although Anthony was born in Portugal, his last residence was in Padua. Revered as a preacher and worker of wonders, he was canonized in 1232, a year after his death.
The history of this church is unclear, Even though known records give the foundation date at c. 1230 (perhaps the date of an earlier church on the same site), scholars date the church at c. 1290; it was completed at c. 1310.
The church is a mixture of traditions. It has both Romanesque and Gothic arches. The massive domes are reminiscent of those of San Marco in Venice. Byzantine elements also include the domed cruciform plan, with the domed nave. Still, Lombard Romanesque stylistic qualities are seen in the screen facade, the octagonal turrets and the brick masonry.
From Padua, we go on to Vicenza.
Our mission: Palladio Villas!
Visiting Vicenza
The railway station is to the south-west of the town centre; most of Vicenza's attractions are clustered closely together inside the old town walls. Walking straight along Viale Roma from the railway station, you'll pass two bus stops for the number 8 - if you are planning a trip to the villas just outside town, check the latest timetable displayed here. Soon you'll arrive outside the old town gate, Porta Castello, but first you can visit the Giardino Salvi just outside the gateway: a shady park, ornamented with statues and the Palladian Loggia Valmarana, which is dramatically reflected in dark waters.
Just inside the gateway lies a very convenient self-service restaurant, Self Pause, which is a cheap and quick place to fill up before exploring the town centre. Around Vicenza you can admire many grand buildings by Palladio and his followers. The Italian word palazzo usually means any large building rather than a palace; but many of Vicenza's palazzi do merit the grander translation. Some of the town's buildings are medieval, with several in the Venetian Gothic style, but the majority date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They line the narrow lanes of Vicenza's town centre; which are called contra, a local word for 'street'.
As soon as you're inside the Porta you find yourself among the town's great buildings. One of the most curious is off to your right. Designed by Palladio, Palazzo Porto Breganze was never finished and stands in an abbreviated form. In front of you is the Corso Andrea Palladio, the centre's main thoroughfare, lined with smart shops and cafes. Some of Vicenza's grandest palazzi lie on Contra Porti, off to the left.
Piazza dei Signori, a few yards south of Corso Andrea Palladio, is the heart of town. It is dominated by two of Vicenza's most striking landmarks, the Basilica Palladiana, , the town's medieval law courts, with an imposing later facade by Palladio, and the adjacent Torre di Piazza, a tall and skinny tower. Right in the long midday shadow cast by the tower you'll find one of Vicenza's tourist information offices, where you can pick up a town map, leaflets about local events and attractions and any advice you may need. A second office is located not far away, by the Teatro Olimpico.
The town's most famous individual sight is probably the Teatro Olimpico, Palladio's last work, which was finished by his son and then by Vincenzo Scamozzi. The ticket you'll buy here (€8) entitles you to enter the town's various civic museums. Conveniently, the theatre is open throughout the day with no lunchtime closure. The building was modelled on ancient Roman theatres, with a curved amphitheatre, graded stepped seating and lavish ornamentation. It incorporates a fabulous permanent stage set (designed for Greek tragedy) by Scamozzi with trompe l'oeil street scenes and classical motifs.
Over the road from the Teatro Olimpico is Palazzo Chiericati, which today houses the town's museum (
The Palladio links have inspired an architecture study centre and museum, the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio, which houses architecture exhibitions in a palazzo designed by Palladio, Palazzo Barbaran da Porto.
For views over the area, visitors can walk uphill (or take a bus) to the Santuario di Monte Berico, a church built on the site of two apparitions of the Madonna. A long arcaded walkway climbs up the hill, which is useful on a sunny or a rainy day.
Teatro OlimpicoThe Teatro Olimpico was designed for the Vicenza Accademia Olimpica to stage theatrical performances. Modeled by Palladio after both his studies of several ancient theaters and his own illustrations of classical theater design, made for Daniele Barbaro's translation of Vitruvius, this is a lone surviving Renaissance theater.
Inside an exterior brick box, the elaborate wooden theater interior is a half circle of steep tiers of seats (wood covered benches) facing a rectangular proscenium stage. A wooden colonnade with cornice and figures above circles the top of the seats. The ceiling plane is undifferentiated and was later painted blue, suggesting an open sky above the theater.
The walls and ceiling of the proscenium are elaborately articulated with architectural details and statues, made of wood and plaster. A central arched opening dominates the back wall, flanked by two smaller doorways. Through these openings, elaborate stage sets of streets angle backstage, a triad through the central opening and single streets through each side. These sets, designed later by Scamozzi, use techniques of tilting the floors and contracting the angle between the street walls and the heights of their building facades to make foreshortened streets in perspective.
In March, we were able to see the exterior of Malcontenta, the Palladian villa closest to Venice. We only got to see the outside, but we were captivated.
So this trip, we are staying in Vicenza specifically to see some of the other Palladio villas.
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) remains the most influential architect in the history of architecture. About 450 years ago his country houses -- called "villas" -- began to appear in the countryside of the Veneto, the mainland province around Venice.
Palladio's villas revolutionized Western architecture, and changed the way homes look in our contemporary world. His influence was ensured by his revolutionary treatise The Four Books of Architecture (1570).
The villas represent Palladio's response to the unique needs of his contemporary world. In the villas Palladio re-worked what he perceived to be timeless and universal principles newly re-discovered from the past. Fortuitously, the needs of his time have remained needs of the modern world, so Palladio's architectural insights and solutions remain vital and relevant today.
Eighteen Renaissance villas by Palladio survive today in the Veneto. Many of them are open to the public and are visited each year by thousands of architects, art historians, and tourists who want to admire their beauty, feel closer to history, and better understand the foundations of the modern world.
Palladio's 18 Surviving Villas
1. Villa Godi-Malinverni Lonego di Lugo (Vicenza) 1537-42, 1549-52
2. Villa Valmarana-Bressan Vigadolo di Monticello Conte Otto (Vicenza) 1541-3
3. Villa Forni-Costa Montecchio Precalcino (Vicenza) 1560s [?] [cf 1541-2]
4. Villa Gazzotti-Marcello Bertisina (Vicenza) c. 1542-7, 1550-5
5. Villa Pisani-Ferri Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza) 1542-4, c. 1561/2-6/9
6. Villa Caldogno Caldogno (Vicenza) c. 1548/9-52, 1569-70
7. Villa Saraceno-Lombardi Finale di Agugliaro (Vicenza) c. 1545-8
8. Villa Poiana Poiana Maggiore (Vicenza) c. 1549-56
9. Villa Zen Donegal di Cessalto (Treviso) c. 1558-66?
10. Villa Pisani-Placco Porta Padova, Montagnana (Padova) 1552/3-5
11. Villa Cornaro-Gable Piombino Dese (Padova) 1551-3
12. Villa Barbaro-Volpi Maser (Treviso) c. 1549/51-8
13. Villa Chiericati-Rigo Vancimuglio (Vicenza) 1547/8-54, 1574-80
14. Villa Badoer Fratta Polesine (Rovigo) 1556/7-63
15. Villa Foscari ("La Malcontenta") Malcontenta di Mira (Venezia) 1558-60
16. Villa Emo-Capodolista Fanzolo di Vedelago (Treviso) c. 1559-65
17. Villa Sarego Santa Sofia di Pedemonte (Verona) 1552/3?-69
18. Villa Almerico-Valmarana ("La Rotonda") Vicenza 1565/6-9
Our favorite villa is La Rotunda (1566-1580).
We will visit it on the morning of Wednesday the 28th.
La Rotonda - Palladio's most famous - is situated atop a hill in suburban Vicenza. Its four facades look out upon cultivated fields on three sides and a wooded slope on the fourth. The central dome, one of Palladio's most famous and imitated motifs, was itself inspired by the Pantheon of ancient Rome.
Paolo Almerico, a papal prelate of the Popes Pio IV and Pio V, commissioned Villa Rotonda in 1566 upon his return to Vicenza after a long residence in Rome. Palladio's protege Vincenzo Scamozzi oversaw completion of the structure following Palladio's death in 1580.
In the villa designed for the prelate, Palladio introduces formal elements to suggest a significance of sacredness. Palladio was inspired by the roman Pantheon, then named "Rotonda", resuming the classical theme of the "sacred space" that comes from the blending of the formal models of the cube and the sphere.
Palladio crowns the building with the cupola, and repeats four times the classical pronao (the inner area of a portico situated between the colonnade and the entrance) to celebrate the prestige of the commissioner and his important office beside Popes. La Rotonda is the only one of Palladio's buildings crowned by a cupola.
Also the 16th century frescoes, by Alessandro and Giambattista Maganza and by Anselmo Canera, appear in tuning with this program with many allegories connected to the virtues of the religious life. In the cupola, for example, are represented (near celebrity) religion, benignity, moderation, and chastity.
The west room, besides, was named "Room of the Religion" just for the subject of the ceiling frescoes, while in the east room there is the apologetical Allegory of Paolo Almerico the prelate, crowned by celebrity and surrounded by fidelity, affability, persuasion, and Europe (symbol of reason oriented toward the divine).
La Rotonda differentiates in the scenery of the venetian villas of the latter half of the 1500s: it's a suburban mansion, refined meeting point for the aristocratic of Vicenza, and just a place of amusement and "literary idleness."
The Capra family, that acquired it in the 1591, ordered architect Vincenzo Scamozzi to assign the adjacent buildings to the agricultural life. The villa was acquired and restored to its present condition in the 20th century by the Valmarana family of Venice.
The Villa and grounds are open Wednesdays March-December from 10-12 a. m., 3-6 p.m.
The grounds are open daily (except Monday) 10-12 a. m., 3-6 p. m.
Among the most well-known is the Villa Valmarana ai Nani ('of the dwarves'), so-called because of its decorative statues. Nearby is Palladio's famous villa, La Rotonda. Both of these are in the outskirts of Vicenza and can be reached by bus number 8. They can be combined in a walking excursion with Monte Berico - read directions in our Vicenza villas article:
Vicenza villas
Even if you're only in Vicenza for a day trip, we strongly recommend you spend two or three hours visiting these sights just outside town. La Rotonda is an important Palladian villa, Villa Valmarina ai Nani a charming and less formal house, and the views from Monte Berico on a clear day are absolutely fantastic. If you visit Vicenza without seeing these sights, you're really missing something special. The three can be combined in an excursion which is manageable on foot from the city centre, although we recommend starting by bus. Note the opening times first; the best day for this outing is a Wednesday when La Rotonda is open to the public. On other days (restricted times) you can pay to enter the grounds.
Part of the walk (between the villas) is on a roughly-surfaced footpath, and there will be some uphill whichever way you walk. However we made this outing on a hot summer day and didn't find the gradients too tiring. There's plenty of shade.
We began by taking a bus out of town to La Rotonda. This bus is infrequent; if you take it on your return you will have to wait on a main road without shelter, maybe for some time. So we advise taking the bus out, and walking back. Directions for the walk are in italics.
The bus for La Rotonda is the number 8. It has two stops on Viale Roma, the avenue linking the railway station with the town centre. Then it loops around and passes the station, stopping outside. From here it is a short ride - under ten minutes - to the stop for La Rotonda. Ask the driver to tell you where to get off. The timetable is displayed on the bus stop; buy bus tickets beforehand in a bar or news-kiosk.
From the bus stop take the first road uphill on your right - it is signposted for the villa. After a short walk up the hill you pass a footpath on your right indicated for the Villa Valmarana ai Nani. Later you'll take this route, but first continue a few yards to La Rotonda, on your left.
La Rotonda
This building, also called by various permutations of the name Villa Almerico Capra Valmarana (after its past owners) is usually known simply as La Rotonda for its domed form. Designed by Andrea Palladio in the 1560s (although it wasn't finished for several decades), the building is a perfect expression of Palladio's love of symmetry and classical forms. The villa is a cube, with a temple-style façade on each side, topped by a central dome.
The entrance fee is €5 for the grounds, and €10 for the grounds and interior.
The villa is very commercialised as an attraction. Apart from the expensive entrance charge, you'll find all kinds of branded souvenir items and also a threatening notice asserting all rights to any images of the building or architecture. If the villa is closed or you don't want to spend money you could simply peer through the gate. There are also good, though more distant, views of the villa from the main road below (the route the bus takes).
After visiting the villa, retrace your steps to the start of the footpath to Villa Valmarana. This walled dirt path heads uphill and bends around to emerge right outside the villa, after only about five minutes.
Villa Valmarana ai Nani
This villa belonging to the Valmarana family takes its name from the statues of dwarves (nani) which decorate its garden wall. There are various explanations for these: that they record the legend of a suicidal dwarf princess who used to live on the site, or perhaps that the statues were sculpted to please a dwarf child of the family.
The main villa's piano nobile is open to the public. Like most of the countryside villas in the Veneto, it contains a fairly modest amount of space and was designed for summer entertaining. The central hall and corner rooms are covered in frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo depicting mythological and literary scenes. The foresteria, a separate building which was used to house guests, is frescoed by Tiepolo's son, this time with rural landscapes and activities.
The villa has some pretty gardens with lovely views over green countryside which is reminiscent of Tuscany. Although the house is elegant and lavishly decorated, it has a much more charming and homely feel than the temple-like Rotonda.
As well as a small array of goods and guidebooks for sale, the villa also has free guides in different languages which can be borrowed. These take you through room by room, explaining the themes of the frescoes.
The villa is open between March and November.
Tuesday to Sunday 10am - 12 noon,
Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday 10am - 12 noon, and 3pm -6pm.
Entrance costs €8.
When you leave the villa, follow the road which leads under the wall lined with stone dwarves. Continue uphill in the same direction along the walled, cobbled Via San Bastian. This emerges onto a leafy hillside street with benches, Via Massimo d'Azeglio. At the end is Viale 10 Giugno, which climbs up to the Basilica di Monte Berico.
Monte Berico
Monte Berico is a hill on the southern side of Vicenza. Centuries ago there were two apparitions of the Virgin Mary here, and a church was built on the site. The grand Basilica di Monte Berico, with its three Baroque facades and a painting by Veronese, is worth visiting, but the views from the hillside are just as impressive.
From a large panoramic car park there are staggering views over Vicenza and to the mountains beyond, the edge of the Dolomites. On a clear day this is a fantastic place to come, both for enjoying the views and for getting a sense of the landscape of this part of the Veneto. There are cafes where you can purchase refreshments.
Across the road from the church, just above the car park, is a sign to a 'Monumento alla Mama' a sweet statue of a mother and baby.
From Monte Berico you can simply descend the long arcaded walk to the foot of the hill. The railway station is a few minutes' walk away to the left.
This entire excursion, from catching the bus in Vicenza to arriving back at the railway station, took approximately two and a half hours, including visits to both the villas. We found it a great way to spend the afternoon after sightseeing and lunch in the town centre.
Strà
Strà is a small town on the Brenta Canal between Venice and Padua, in the Veneto region of north-east Italy. The mostly-modern steets are typical of the settlements you'll drive through in this part of the region. Strà grew up along the Brenta Canal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the heart of the area popular with wealthy villa-building Venetians.
The ACTV bus service number 53E from Venice to Padua (Padova) stops in Strà.
In Venice the bus stop is in Piazzale Roma - buy your tickets from the ACTV kiosk close to the canal. In 2007 the return fare was €5.80; the bus departed from stop C4 (near the souvenir kiosks).
Buses leave every 30 minutes, and the journey takes an hour. Some of the bus route follows the Brenta Canal and you can spot a number of interesting villas through the windows.
Arriving in from Venice there is a stop on the main road before Villa Pisani and another, further away but easier to spot, in Strà (the first stop after you pass the huge villa on your right-hand side). In the opposite direction the stops are in similar locations on the far side of the road; one in Strà and the other just after the car park for the villa.
Villa Pisani
Just about the grandest villa of them all is located just outside Strà: the Villa Pisani. This is what makes Strà worthy of a visit, and its straightforward transport links are an added incentive. It's nearer Padua than Venice, but from either town it makes a pleasant excursion, a half-day trip.
Villa Pisani (also known as the Villa Nazionale) was built by the rich Pisani family in the eighteenth century. To celebrate the election of a Pisani doge of Venice - the city's 114th ruler - the palace is said to have been designed with 114 rooms. It is much more formal and imposing than most of the Veneto pleasure villas; a grand palace built to impress as well as for entertaining.
Villa Pisani didn't spend much time as a family property. It was bought by Napoleon in 1807 - he apparently spent just one night here before giving the villa to his adoptive son, the Viceroy of Italy. It ended up in the possession of the Savoy family, Italy's short-lived monarchy, and then of the Italian State. It was the site of the first meeting between Hitler and Mussolini. Some of the original antique furniture now resides in the president's palace, the Quirinale, in Rome. Furnishings here now are an assortment of pieces from other buildings in the area.
Visitors can tour the piano nobile (first floor) of the villa, making a circuit around the external rooms overlooking the grounds and then through the glamorous central ballroom with its ludicrously overblown frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo exalting the Pisani family. One of the prettiest rooms is 'Napoleon's bedroom', complete with a little four-poster bed. Next door is an unexpected sunken bath.
The gardens are included in the villa ticket, or can be visited separately at a cheaper price. These are pleasant to wander in. A long water channel between lawns links the main building with the grand facade of the disguised stables beyond; a convincing and impressive illusion. There is a 'English' wilderness garden, where paths run through woodland and up a panoramic mound (it would have been panoramic before the growth of the trees, anyway). Formal paths and walks extend symmetrically, while follies and architectural features include a summer-house on a steep island surrounded by frog-filled moat. In a distant corner are some restored greenhouses and a walled citrus garden, ornamented with classical statues. There is a small maze (labirinto) centred around a little stone tower, supposedly the site of amorous aristocratic hi-jinks. Sadly this isn't always open - a sign outside the ticket/gift shop should tell you if it's closed.
The villa and gardens are open daily from 9am - 4 pm. from October to March, and the villa is closed on Mondays.
Strà is large enough to boast a few shops and bars where you can find something to eat and drink. Tourist information - leaflets and maps about the region's villas - is available at the Villa Pisani, just inside the main entrance and at the car park on the main road alongside the garden walls.
Villa Foscarini Rossi
The pretty Villa Foscarini Rossi lies between Villa Pisani and the centre of Strà, and is a more typical example of the elegant Veneto villas. It is open to the public, and contains a shoe museum: the Rossi family are famous shoemakers. You may be the only visitor; it's certainly a diversion off the beaten track.
After paying admission you can first visit the foresteria, a porticoed building designed (and still used) for elegant entertaining, with charming frescoes to admire. Then in the main villa you can explore two floors of shoes: a few historic exhibits, some shoe-related sculptures and examples of high-fashion footwear grouped by designer and decade. Some of the rooms retain their historic decoration.
Da novembre a marzo:
Lunedì/venerdì: 9.00/12.30
Chiuso sabato e domenica (apertura straordinaria per gruppi su prenotazione)
Ingresso a pagamento: Intero: € 5
Villa Contarini
located in Piazolla sul Brenta, 15 km northwest of Padua
Villa Contarini in Piazzola sul Brenta is perhaps one of the largest, most grandiose and composite building complexes designed in the characteristic architectural style of a “Villa Veneta” structure. This elaborated structure was most probably designed by Andrea Palladio and commissioned by the Venetian aristocrats Francesco and Paolo Contarini.
Inside the villa, the music-hall, once loved by Vivaldi who performed some of his compositions there, is very suggestive and attractive. The villa also contains lots of 17th century frescoes and a very interesting collection of ancient maps and drawings.
The foundations of an ancient castle served probably for the construction of the villa in the sixteenth century. Its actual appearance dates back to the second half of the seventeenth century, when Marco Contarini, Procurator of Venice, enlarged the building and added typical baroque decorations. Particularly interesting are some of its architectonic peculiarities, above all the so-called "Sala della chitarra rovesciata" (guitar hall), which gurantees an exceptional acoustics.
open 10-4 daily, closed Wednesday
Villa Barbaro (1549-58)
(We will visit on Saturday the 24th, Sunday the 25th, or - most likely - on Tuesday, the 27th.)
Villa Barbaro, located in the village of Maser adjacent to the famous hilltown of Asolo, was built for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia, and his brother Marc'antonio Barbaro, an ambassador of the Venetian Republic. Construction began in 1549 and was substantially completed by 1558. The Tempietto (chapel) was constructed 1579-80.
The central residential space is erected on the remains of a medieval castle. Its facade features four engaged Ionic columns adapted from the Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome. Barchesse (farm buildings) extend symmetrically from the left and right of the central structure, surmounted at the ends by dovecotes (corner towers), each with a large sundial on the facade. The result is the famous 5-part profile familiar in later Palladio-inspired architecture, including the U. S. Capitol building (with the Houses of Congress replacing the dovecotes!).
The interior of the central residence is highlighted by magnificent frescos executed between 1560 and 1562 principally by Paolo Veronese. Set in the hillside at the rear of the central residence is a spectacular spring-fed statuary grotto known as a nymphaeum, which may have been the conception of the villa's patrons. One of them, Marc'Antonio Barbaro, executed several of its statues and contributed other sculptural decoration to the villa as well.
Hours: Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday only: 2:30-5 p. m.(October-February)
VILLA VALMARANA (now ZEN) - Bolzano Vicentino (Vicenza)
Open on request
Unfortunately destroyed by air bombings, the villa has been perfectly restored. Started on Palladio's designs, published in the 1570 treatise, it was completed with arbitrary modifications. Chapel dating back to 1615. Noteworthy statues and wrought-iron gates.
Villa Cornaro (1552-53)
We won't be able to get inside Villa Cornaro, located in the village of Piombino Dese about 19 miles from Venice, but we want to see the outside, because the villa is featured in the book Palladian Dreams that David and I have been reading, written by the American woman who bought the villa several years ago. It makes us laugh because the author claims that she and her husband are NOT rich; and yet they own this as a summer home??!?!?!?!?
Constructed in 1552-3 for Giorgio Cornaro, son of a wealthy Venetian family, Villa Cornaro introduced to Western architecture the two-story projecting portico-loggia motif. Palladio's device influenced Western architecture for hundreds of years, becoming a recurrent feature in Georgian and Colonial American architecture.
The impact of the motif can be ascribed to two primary factors. First, it anticipated the change in the concept of residences, away from the fortress and toward comfort, function, and interaction with surroundings. Second, the double portico-loggia motif was striking, flexible and subject to infinite elaboration and permutation by subsequent generations of architects. Among those utilizing the device was Thomas Jefferson, who selected Villa Cornaro as his initial model for Monticello.
Equally important, however, is the exquisite harmony of the Villa's interior spaces. The living area of the Villa's central core forms a square within which are arranged six repetitions of an elegant standard module.
Piombino Dese (Padua District) is 19 miles from Venice and is accessible by car or train (about 45 minutes by car; 35 minutes by train). The villa is two blocks from the Piombino Dese train station.
Open to groups (minimum 10): Throughout the year by appointment. (Tel 049/936-5017)
Open to individuals: (May-September only) Saturday 3:30-6 p. m.
We won't be able to get inside the Villa Emo (1559-65) either.
Villa Emo, located in the village of Fanzolo di Vedelago, was built in the period 1559-65. The central residential space features four columns (two of them engaged) in the manner of a Greek temple front.
As at nearby Villa Barbaro, barchesse (farm buildings) extend symmetrically from the left and right of the central structure, with the ends of the barchesse surmounted by dovecotes.
Villa Emo was, until its sale in 2004, the only Palladian villa that had descended in male lines of the original family continuously since its construction. The Emo family, which came to Venice from Greece before the year 1000, produced civic and military leaders throughout the long history of the Venetian Republic.
Location: Fanzolo di Vedelago (Treviso District). Accessible by car from Venice (28 miles).
Hours: May to September only.
Palladio
Andrea Palladio (1508 – 1580), was an Italian architect, widely considered the most influential person in the history of Western architecture.
He was born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola in Padua, then part of the Republic of Venice. Apprenticed as a stonecutter in Padua when he was 13, he broke his contract after only 18 months and fled to the nearby town of Vicenza. Here he became an assistant in the leading workshop of stonecutters and masons. He frequented the workshop of Bartolomeo Cavazza, from whom he learned some of his skills.
His talents were recognized in his early thirties by Count Gian Giorgio Trissino, who later gave him the name Palladio, an allusion to the Greek goddess of wisdom Pallas Athene. In 1541 he moved to Rome to study classic architecture.
Palladian style is named after him; a style which adhered to classical Roman principles, similarly to styles of the Early and High Renaissance, when classical revivalism was at its peak. His architectural works have been valued for centuries as the quintessence of High Renaissance calm and harmony. Palladio designed many churches, villas, and palaces, especially in Venice, Vicenza and the surrounding area.
His style became fashionable all over Europe, for example in parts of the Loire Valley of France. In Britain, Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren embraced the Palladian style. Another admirer was the architect Richard Boyle, 4th Earl of Cork, also known as Lord Burlington, who, with William Kent, designed Chiswick House. Later exponents of his work who helped to popularize Palladio's concepts included the 18th century Venetian architect Giacomo Leoni who published an authoritative four volume work on Palladio and his architectural concepts. In a letter written by Colonel Isaac A. Coles to General Hartwell Cocke in 1816, Coles related Thomas Jefferson's admiration for Palladio: "With Mr. Jefferson I conversed at length on the subject of architecture — Palladio, he said 'was the Bible — you should get it and stick close to it…' "
Palladio's architecture also inspired a classical music piece by the Welsh composer Karl Jenkins, called Palladio. Many people know it by its first movement, which was used for a De Beers diamond television commercial.
He died in Maser, near Treviso.
Chronology
* 1508: Born 30 November.
* 1521: Begins work as a stone mason.
* 1540: Begins his first work, Villa Godi in Lonedo.
* 1544: Begins construction of Villa Pisani in Bagnolo.
* 1545: Involved in the refurbishment of the Basilica of Vicenza.
* 1550: Produces drawings for Palazzo Chiericati and Villa Foscari.
* 1552: Begins work on Villa Cornaro and the palace of Iseppo De' Porti
* 1556: In Udine he works on Casa Antonini and in Vicenza begins with Palazzo Thiene. While his assignments increase along with his fame, he collaborates with the patriarch of Aquileia on the edition of a book on Vitruvio, providing the drawings.
* 1557: Begins Villa Badoer in the Po river valley.
* 1558: Realises a project for the church of San Pietro di Castello in Venice and probably in the same year begins the construction of Villa Malcontenta.
* 1559: Begins Villa Emo in the village of Fanzolo di Vedelago.
* 1561: Begins the construction of Villa Pojana Maggiore and at the same time of the refettorio for the Benedictines of St. George in Venice, and subsequently the facade of the monastery Monastero per la Carità and Villa Serego.
* 1562: Begins the facade of San Francesco della Vigna and work on San Giorgio Maggiore.
* 1565: Begins the construction of Villa Cagollo in Vicenza and Villa Pisani in Montagnana.
* 1566: Palazzo Valmarana and Villa Zeno.
* 1567: Begins works for the Villa Capra "La Rotonda".
* 1570: He is nominated Proto della Serenissima (Illustrious citizen of Venice) and publishes in Venice I Quattro Libri dell'Architettura (The Four Books of Architecture)
* 1571: Realises: Villa Piovene, Palazzo Porto Barbaran, the Loggia del Capitanio and Palazzo Porto Breganze.
* 1574: Publishes the 'Commentari' (commentaries) of Caesar and works on studies for the front of the Basilica di San Petronio in Bologna.
* 1577: Begins the construction of the Il Redentore.
* 1580: Prepares drawings for the interior of the church of S. Lucia in Venice and in the same year on 23 March oversees the beginning of the construction of the Teatro Olimpico but dies on 19 August 1580.
Palladio's Italian Villas
villas
About 450 years ago Palladio's country houses — called "villas" — began to appear in the countryside of the Veneto, the mainland province around Venice. Eighteen Renaissance villas by Palladio survive today in the Veneto area around Venice. Many of them are open to the public. They are visited each year by thousands of architects, art historians, tourists and others who want to admire their beauty, feel closer to history and better understand the foundations of the modern world.
Palladio's villas revolutionized Western architecture in the 17th and 18th centuries, produced the school of Southern architecture in the 19th century, and changed the way homes look in our contemporary world. His influence was ensured by his revolutionary treatise The Four Books of Architecture (1570), which stunned the European world.
The villas represent Palladio's response to the unique needs of his contemporary world. In the villas Palladio re-worked what he perceived to be timeless and universal principles newly re-discovered from the past. Fortuitously, the needs of his time have remained needs of the modern world. As a result, Palladio's architectural insights and solutions remain vital and relevant.
The Secrets of Palladio's Villas
Adapted from an illustrated lecture by Carl I. Gable*
About 500 years ago, in the twilight of the period we call the Renaissance, there began to appear near the coast of the Northern Adriatic around the present city of Venice, Italy, a group of country houses unlike any homes ever seen before. They were all within a radius of about 50 miles, and they were all the work of a single architect.
Andrea Palladio's personal history would seem beyond the imagination of even Horatio Alger. Beginning as a 13-year-old apprentice to a stonemason, he grew up to become the sought-after companion of aristocrats and intelligentsia, as well as the political, military and business leaders, of his day — the dominant figure in his field, not just in his own lifetime, not just in the lifetime of those who knew him, but now — more than 400 years later.
Palladio's Contemporary Needs
In Palladio's time Venice was not just a city. It was the center of a vast empire with military and commercial enclaves all around the Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean. In fact, at its height, Venice was one of the greatest military and commercial powers on earth. In population, four times the size of Rome and London combined.
Venice's power came from the fact that its forces stood astride both of the great East-West trade routes of the day: the Northern or land route to Asia and the Orient, and the Southern or sea route.
Venice rose to power in the 1100s by developing an advanced system for constructing war galleys. In fact, Venice originally was entirely a sea power. Based on a group of small islands in an Adriatic lagoon several miles from the mainland, the mighty Venice had no land at all on the Italian mainland until the mid 1300s. Military expansion on the Italian mainland then continued until the early 1500s. By then three dramatic events had set in motion a land rush for the vast undeveloped areas of the European mainland west of Venice.
First, the Ottoman Turks, who had for decades been nibbling away at Venezia's eastern outposts, in 1453 stormed and captured Constantinople, the great Christian city of the eastern world, the massive capital of the long-faded Eastern Roman Empire. This and related developments effectively clipped Venice's already withered control of the land route to Asia, and put its sea route under great pressure as well.
Second, in 1492 the Spanish expedition of Christopher Columbus discovered the Western world, which in ensuing years rapidly replaced the Orient as the most lucrative destination of European traders.
Third and finally, in 1497 Vasco da Gama of Portugal demonstrated a new sea route to Asia by sailing around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. Now the merchants of Western Europe no longer had to pay Venice for safe passage to the East. In just 44 years the Mediterranean Sea — Medi-Terrano, the center of the earth for thousands of years — went from being the center of the earth to the center of very little.
Fortunately, after hundreds of years of fighting, peace had broken out on the mainland. The mainland areas near Venice finally had the security necessary for large-scale agriculture and for transporting those harvests to the population centers.
At the same time, to pull these elements together, there was a class of entrepreneurs with the capital to clear the fields, drain the swamps, organize the farm centers. These were the noble families of Venice. They had amassed their fortunes in foreign trade, in shipping, and — surprisingly for a sea-going class — in agriculture: Huge plantations in Crete, in Cyprus, and elsewhere through their overseas empire. Now they could put their capital and their overseas agricultural experience to work close to home.
These nobles also concluded that getting away from the hurly-burly and commerce of the city, getting closer to the calm and reflection of country life, was beneficial to the spirit, the virtuous, ennobling thing to do. Listen to Palladio himself:
"[B]y exercise, which one can take in the country on foot or on horseback, they will preserve their health and their strength, and there finally their spirits, tired of the agitation of the city, will take great refreshment and consolation, and they can attend quietly to the study of letters, and contemplation — as for that purpose the wise men of old times used often to follow the practice of retiring to similar places, where they were visited by good-hearted friends, and their kin … ."
The Villa Problem
But where were these noble families to stay in the countryside? They needed a magnificent home, something that reflected their own magnificence and virtue. But it wouldn't do just to build a Venetian palace out here in the countryside. That sort of building wouldn't be functional — suited to the business of supervising a large agricultural establishment, or storing the grain and wine produced. That kind of urban building wouldn't facilitate the communication with nature that the man of virtue requires for repose and contemplation. And perhaps most important, that kind of building would cost an arm and a leg.
Something entirely new was needed. Something magnificent, but inexpensive. Something comfortable, restful, yet at the same time functional as the center of activity for dozens of farm workers. Moreover, that the problem posed was not unique to Venice. It turned out to be the central problem at the intersection of modern architecture and modern economics. Therefore, Andrea Palladio's solution has been the cornerstone of architecture ever since.
Palladio's 3-Part Solution
Drawing upon his own insights and observations, Palladio devised a solution with three principal elements:
1. Dramatic exterior motifs.
2. Economical materials.
3. Internal harmony and balance.
Dramatic Exterior Motifs
Palladio ultimately developed three primary types of exterior elevation that we have come to characterize as Palladian. The simplest, most modest and most numerous among the constructed works, Type I (as I will call it), presents a loggia pierced by three openings.
The second, Type II, borrows the Greek temple front. Palladio never saw the Greek monuments, but he visited Rome five times. There he saw, mostly in ruins, the classic public buildings of Imperial Rome — which the Romans, of course, had borrowed from the Greeks. It was Palladio's inspiration to adapt the Greek pediment and columns to private residences.
Finally, the third and most innovative and modern of the three motifs: the double-columned loggia. That is, complete columns above and below.
The first motif, the three-opening loggia, appears in Palladio's very first villa: Villa Godi, which was constructed about 1540. There is a certain clumsiness to this first outing. Heavy volumes at the left and right are reminiscent of the fortress-like villas of the prior century and the early 1500s. Villa Trissino, the villa in Cricoli that Palladio's great benefactor Giangiorgio Trissino built two or three years earlier, comes to mind. There's really nothing obvious here to inspire the architects of future centuries. But there are a few elements that you will see evolve and mature.
First, there is symmetrical balance from left to right. It is a striking contrast to the unsymmetrical Gothic palaces of Venice. And it becomes a cornerstone of Palladian villas.
Secondly, the three-opening loggia — certainly not a new idea either — has been combined with other elements in a way that begins to open the villa to the world outside. Lasting peace — at least in a relative sense — had come to the Veneto. That fact is subtly underscored by Villa Godi.
Let's consider a few more examples of this triple-opening loggia. There's less variety among these than we find in the grander villas of the second and third motifs, although he sometimes elaborated the three openings with a Serliana motif. Villa Pisani at Bagnolo (probably incorporating an earlier tower on the left), Villa Caldogno, Villa Saraceno, Villa Gazzotti — are all substantially similar, and modest in their exterior motif. But a comparison of Villa Saraceno, for example, and Villa Gazzotti shows a fascinating element beginning to emerge at Villa Gazzotti: the pillars of the loggia begin to metamorphose toward classical columns supporting a pediment! At Villa Gazzotti the "columns" are only pilasters, but clearly a pediment of the Greek style is beginning to emerge atop a traditional Italian motif. Not yet the dramatic classical adaptation found in Palladio's great works, but a suggestion of the future.
The story turns dramatically when we move to the true temple-front examples. Now we are moving to the great homes in the history of architecture. At Villa Barbaro in Maser we see one of Palladio's most magnificent and influential designs. First, we see the true Greek temple-front. Not projecting forward in this example, but surmounted by a brilliant classical pediment.
This is the design for the front of a temple. Palladio and the proud patricians of Venice have had the self-confidence to put it on the residence of a mere mortal. Of course, to keep things in perspective, the temple/villa is flanked by adjoining farm buildings for storing grain and wine and for housing farm animals.
At the ends of the barchessas Palladio added dovecotes on top and faced them with sundials. The result is one of the lasting legacies of Western public architecture: the so-called 5-part profile.
Count the parts from left to right: 1-Left Dovecote; 2-Left Barchessa; 3-Residence; 4-Right Barchessa; 5-Right Dovecote. Start with the U. S. Capitol building. But in England there are dozens of country homes with this 5-part profile. Even American ranch-style homes frequently display this Palladian profile.
Here's another example of the 5-part form: Villa Emo at Fanzolo. The dovecotes on the ends are less prominent here, but look at the temple front. Now the columns are free-standing.
Next Palladio moved ahead to his third major motif. Not one loggia, but two loggias, one on top of the other. The garden side at Villa Cornaro shows this motif in its simpler form, with the loggia recessed within the central core of the villa. It's a place to sit and look from a protected area out into the world. But Villa Cornaro is one of Palladio's double-faced villas, and the street side brings the grand culmination of the evolution of Palladio's exterior motifs.
It's the leap to the modern world! Suddenly the "rooms" are not buried in the core and looking out at the world. Now the rooms are thrust out into the midst of the world! Compare this bold villa-as-part-of-the-world with the glum defensive Villa Godi with which Palladio began.
This must be one of Palladio's greatest achievements. Perhaps he was inspired in some way by Villa Giustinian about 40 miles away in Roncade. But essentially we have here a most unusual event: a completely new idea. Here is the first example of this motif ever built.
Economical Materials
Part II of the solution was the use of economical materials.
As you know, the palaces of Venice itself are built of stone brought from distant mainland quarries. The stone was then usually clad in marble from Istria or beyond. But because Palladio had achieved his visual impact through his design motifs, he could build his villas of brick instead of stone, and clad them in stucco instead of marble. Their nasty secret: brick. Brick and stucco.
Even the ornate capitals hold a secret: terra cotta. At least on the sunny south side; on the north facade the capitals might be stone because of the weather. The architraves supporting these mighty pediments? Wood covered with straw lathing and then stucco.
Inside any of the palaces of Venice itself, the walls are bare. In the 16th century the palace walls were covered in magnificent tapestries — both for their beauty and for their insulating qualities in the winter.
Now, since the villas out in the countryside were only for use in the summer farming season, the insulating qualities were not needed for warmth. So, if the walls could be decorated some other way, the huge cost of tapestries could be eliminated entirely. Frescos were the answer. f you didn't mind going down-market, you could hire Veronese or Zelotti to stop by for a month or two and give you some imitation tapestries and columns and statues. In fact, only the Cornaro family — the richest family of the Republic — seems to have resisted the temptation; their villa at Piombino held out for the real thing: real columns, real niches, real statues — not cheap imitations by Veronese.
Interior Harmony and Balance
The last, the least understood, and the most evanescent element of Palladio's solution: Palladio's interior harmony and balance.
It's the difference between Palladio himself and Palladianism. His exterior motifs — innovative as they are — can be copied. His economical materials can be duplicated, even improved. But Palladio's balance and harmony seem to live only in his 18 surviving villas of the Veneto. The harmony and balance of Palladio's interior spaces is their great epiphanal triumph.
First, and fundamentally, Palladio states that the parts of a house must correspond to the whole and to each other. This seems simple in theory but has proved nearly impossible for most of posterity's Palladio wannabes. Standing anywhere in one of Palladio's villas you have at all times a sense of where you are within the total structure. The concept of the floor plan is transparent. Compare that with a large modern house where you never know what twist or turn or size or shape of room may lie around the next corner.
Secondly, Palladio varies the volumetric size of his rooms with the creativity and discipline of a Bach fugue. His inspiration here is said to have been the Classical Roman baths with their rooms on three scales.
Finally, as to the shapes of individual rooms, he offers up a smorgasbord of possibilities, from the square and the circle to rectangles in a variety of ratios of width to length. The ratios of width to length — both as published in his Four Books of Architecture and as measured in the completed villas themselves — have been the subject of a great deal of recent scholarly research with little concrete result.
Rudolph Wittkower in 1949 published Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism with his breathtaking proposition that the ratios of width to length in Palladio's rooms are based on the harmonic proportions of music. In other words, that Palladio worked on an "If it sounds good, it'll look and feel good" principle. The enthusiastic acceptance of this theory was only modestly tempered by the fact that some of Palladio's rooms reflect harmonic musical proportions and some don't.
But Wittkower was right in emphasizing the importance of number theory or numerology as a foundation for Palladio's proportions. Harmonic proportion provides an insight to some of Palladio's villas, particularly the later ones, but equally or more important was the theory of "perfect numbers." The numbers "6" and "10" were deemed to be "perfect" numbers because they reflect the proportions of the human body in several dimensions, including the ratio of front-to-back and side-to-side. In other words, you would feel comfortable in a room that was in the ratio of 6-to-10 because the room would have the same proportions as your own body. Then, in a grammatical challenge, the number "16" was deemed to be the "most perfect" number, primarily because it was the sum of the other two.
The Perfect Scale of Villa Cornaro
Now let's put all this together in an analysis of the central core of the villa I know best, Villa Cornaro.
The first thing that strikes us is that the central core is one of Palladio's preferred shapes, a square. Next we notice the fugal variation of room sizes. You can't see it, of course, in Palladio's floor plan and elevation, but the heights of the rooms modulate as well.
Then let's look at the proportions of one of the long rectangular rooms on the north. Now we are moving toward the central inspiration of Villa Cornaro. The ratio of length to width in the room is 3-to-5. That's the same as 6-to-10. Yes, this room is in the ratio of the two "perfect" numbers. You'll feel very comfortable in this room. And the actual width of this room? Sixteen Vicentine feet: the most perfect number of all.
So here you are looking at Palladio's perfect room. A remarkable artefact to be sure, but remember Palladio's fundamental premise: the parts must relate to the whole and to each other. How does that work here? Well, obviously, there is another room the same size on the north. But then on both the east and west sides, there is a square room with a small room behind it. Those two rooms together repeat the dimensions of the perfect rooms on the north! Now that only leaves the large room. The relation here is not obvious, but it finally emerges: the grand salon is two of our "perfect" rooms side by side.
There you have the secret to the harmony and balance of Villa Cornaro: the central living area is six repetitions of the module of the perfect room, all set within a square.
But harmony and balance, like some of the finest wines, don't travel. You can transport the double projecting portico of Villa Cornaro to the Miles Brewton House in Charleston, to a pleasant home on Woodward Way in Atlanta, to thousands of other homes across America. And you can always transport wood or other even cheaper materials. You can transfer the 5-part profile of Villa Barbaro, the occuli of Villa Poiana, or the encircling arms of Villa Badoer. But the balance and harmony — the balance and the harmony that are the core of Palladio — don't travel. They can be found only in the Veneto.
They don't travel, but they never age. Unfazed, unaffected by any pale imitations — the villas live vibrantly today … As vibrant today as in the crisp, cool mornings when Palladio walked there.
Palladio's 18 Surviving Villas
1. Villa Godi-Malinverni Lonego di Lugo (Vicenza) 1537-42, 1549-52
2. Villa Valmarana-Bressan Vigadolo di Monticello Conte Otto (Vicenza) 1541-3
3. Villa Forni-Costa Montecchio Precalcino (Vicenza) 1560s [?] [cf 1541-2]
4. Villa Gazzotti-Marcello Bertisina (Vicenza) c. 1542-7, 1550-5
5. Villa Pisani-Ferri Bagnolo di Lonigo (Vicenza) 1542-4, c. 1561/2-6/9
6. Villa Caldogno Caldogno (Vicenza) c. 1548/9-52, 1569-70
7. Villa Saraceno-Lombardi Finale di Agugliaro (Vicenza) c. 1545-8
8. Villa Poiana Poiana Maggiore (Vicenza) c. 1549-56
9. Villa Zen Donegal di Cessalto (Treviso) c. 1558-66?
10. Villa Pisani-Placco Porta Padova, Montagnana (Padova) 1552/3-5
11. Villa Cornaro-Gable Piombino Dese (Padova) 1551-3
12. Villa Barbaro-Volpi Maser (Treviso) c. 1549/51-8
13. Villa Chiericati-Rigo Vancimuglio (Vicenza) 1547/8-54, 1574-80
14. Villa Badoer Fratta Polesine (Rovigo) 1556/7-63
15. Villa Foscari ("La Malcontenta") Malcontenta di Mira (Venezia) 1558-60
16. Villa Emo-Capodolista Fanzolo di Vedelago (Treviso) c. 1559-65
17. Villa Sarego Santa Sofia di Pedemonte (Verona) 1552/3?-69
18. Villa Almerico-Valmarana ("La Rotonda") Vicenza 1565/6-9
Five Important Examples
Villa Barbaro
Villa Barbaro, located in the village of Maser adjacent to the famous hilltown of Asolo, was built for Daniele Barbaro, Patriarch of Aquileia, and his brother Marc'antonio Barbaro, an ambassador of the Venetian Republic. Construction began in 1549 and was substantially completed by 1558. The Tempietto (chapel) was constructed 1579-80.
The central residential space is erected on the remains of a medieval castle or manor house. Its facade features four engaged Ionic columns adapted from the Temple of Fortuna Virilis in Rome. As at nearby Villa Emo, barchesse (farm buildings) extend symmetrically from the left and right of the central structure. The ends of the barchesse are surmounted by dovecotes, each with a large sundial on the facade. The result is the famous 5-part profile familiar in later Palladio-inspired architecture, including the U. S. Capitol building (with the Houses of Congress replacing the dovecotes!).
The interior of the central residence is highlighted by magnificent frescoes executed between 1560 and 1562 principally by Paolo Veronese.
Set in the hillside at the rear of the central residence is a spectacular spring-fed statuary grotto known as a nymphaeum. The nymphaeum may have been the conception of the villa's patrons. One of them, Marc'Antonio Barbaro, executed several of its statues and contributed other sculptural decoration to the villa as well.
The villa first descended through female lines in the same family until 1838. In 1934 the villa was acquired by Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, who began the restoration that has returned to villa to its present condition. Today his granddaughter resides at the villa with her family.
Tourist Information.
Location: Maser (Treviso District). Accessible by car from Asolo (10km) or Venice (60km).
Hours: Tuesday, Saturday, Sunday only:
3:00-6:00 p. m. ( March-September)
The Tempietto (chapel) open Tuesdays, upon request (Tel. 0423/565-002)
Villa Cornaro
Villa Cornaro, located in the village of Piombino Dese about 30km from Venice, is a masterwork of Palladio's middle period. One American writer recently included it on his list of 10 of the world's most important buildings ("Top Ten Buildings," Town & Country, January 2003).
Constructed in 1552-3 for Giorgio Cornaro, younger son of a wealthy Venetian family, Villa Cornaro introduced to Western architecture the two-story projecting portico-loggia motif. Palladio's device influenced Western architecture for hundreds of years, becoming a recurrent feature in Georgian, Adam and Colonial American architecture.
The impact of the motif can be ascribed to two primary factors. First, it anticipated the change in the concept of residences, away from the fortress and toward comfort, function, and interaction with surroundings. Second, the double portico-loggia motif was striking, flexible and subject to infinite elaboration and permutation by subsequent generations of architects. Among those utilizing the device was Thomas Jefferson, who selected Villa Cornaro as his initial model for Monticello.
Equally important, however, is the exquisite harmony of the Villa's interior spaces. The living area of the Villa's central core forms a square within which are arranged six repetitions of an elegant standard module.
The module, exemplified by the two rooms to the left and right of the entrance hall, is 16 Trevisan feet in width by 27 Trevisan feet in length, creating a ratio of 6 to 10, the "perfect" numbers of Renaissance architecture. The sum of those numbers was deemed "most perfect" and, as indicated, was used by Palladio as the width of the module. Palladio repeated the module on the east and west sides of the Villa, where the module is divided into a square room of 16 x 16 feet and a smaller room beyond. The central grand salon comprises two of the modules placed side by side. The 9-room floor plan of the piano nobile is exactly repeated in a second piano nobile above, with four mezzanine rooms between.
The Villa is unique among extant Palladian works for the extent of its original tile and terrazzo floors and original exterior intonaco (the stucco-like material covering the brick substructure of Palladio's country villas). The south facade bears graffiti recording Cornaro family births in the 1600s, numerous family deaths and honors, and a note from a cousin recording his 1690 flight to Piombino from Venice to avoid "contagion."
In 1588 the son of the Villa's original patron commissioned the six statues by Camillo Mariani that decorate the grand salon. The statues, which fill niches that were part of Palladio's original design, represent an innovation in Renaissance sculpture: a private family portrait gallery with full-figure statues of prominent members instead of mere busts. The family pantheon includes Doge Marco Cornaro and Caterina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus.
The walls of Villa Cornaro remained in white for many years to accommodate the magnificent painting collection of the early owners. In 1716 Andrea Cornaro, the great great grandson of Giorgio Cornaro, launched a new decorative program. He commissioned Mattia Bortoloni, a young student of Antonio Balestra, to execute a large cycle of 104 fresco panels within a system of stucco putti and frames created by Bortolo Cabianca of Venice.
The frescoes in six rooms of the piano nobile feature scenes from the Old Testament; in two rooms of the second floor the frescoes depict New Testament scenes. The Biblical theme and the specific subjects of the individual frescoes were designated by Andrea Cornaro himself. Bortoloni, then 21 years old, utilized the newly evolving "light manner," one of the first extensive fresco demonstrations of that style in the Veneto.
The subjects of the frescoes appear to have been selected to portray themes of freemasonry, a conclusion strengthened by the apparent use of Masonic symbols in the frescoes on the eastern walls of the principal frescoed rooms - one of the earliest examples of Masonic art in Italy.
Villa Cornaro remained in the Cornaro family for 253 years, then passed through three other families as a private residence until 1951. After a difficult period in the 1950s and 60s when it was used as a parochial kindergarten and then stood vacant, Villa Cornaro returned to private ownership in 1969 and was restored over a period of 20 years by Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Rush of Greenwich, Connecticut.
Since 1989 Villa Cornaro has been the spring and autumn residence of Sally and Carl I. Gable of Atlanta, Georgia, the sixth family to occupy the villa in its 450-year history.
Palladian Days
Sally and Carl Gable tell their experiences in a new book, Palladian Days (Knopf and Anchor Books).
Tourist Information
Location: Piombino Dese (Padua District). Accessible by car or train. Piombino Dese is 30km from Venice (about 45 minutes by car; 35 minutes by train). The villa is two blocks from the Piombino Dese train station.
Hours:
Open to groups (minimum 10): Throughout the year by appointment
(Telephone 049/936-5017)
Open to individuals: (May-September only) Saturday 3:30-6:00 p. m.
Villa Emo
Villa Emo, located in the village of Fanzolo di Vedelago, was built in the period 1559-65.
The central residential space features four columns (two of them engaged) in the manner of a Greek temple front. As at nearby Villa Barbaro, barchesse (farm buildings) extend symmetrically from the left and right of the central structure, with the ends of the barchesse surmounted by dovecotes. The result is the famous 5-part profile familiar in later Palladio-inspired architecture, including the U. S. Capitol building (with the Houses of Congress replacing the dovecotes!).
Villa Emo was, until its sale in 2004, the only Palladian villa that had descended in male lines of the original family continuously since its construction. The Emo family, which came to Venice from Greece before the year 1000, produced civic and military leaders throughout the long history of the Venetian Republic.
Tourist Information
Location: Fanzolo di Vedelago (Treviso District). Accessible by car from Venice (45km).
Hours: May to September only:
Monday, Wednesday-Friday 2:30-6:00 p. m.
Tuesday: 3:00-6:00 p. m.
Saturday: 2:30-7:00 p. m.
Sunday: 10:00 a. m.-12:30 p. m., 2:30-7:00 p. m.
Telephone: 0423/476-414 or 476-334
Fax: 0423/487-043
La Malcontenta
The magnificent Greek temple-front design of La Malcontenta rises high above the banks of the Brenta river near the coastal lagoon of Venice.
The brothers Nicolo and Alvise Foscari commissioned La Malcontenta in the late 1550s, and it was nearly complete by the time of Nicolo's death in 1560. Interestingly, the villa's ownership was returned to the Foscari family in the present generation, and they have overseen a careful renovation.
The source of the villa's traditional name is unsettled. Perhaps it was originally the name of the village where the villa is situated, or perhaps it describes the melancholy woman pictured in one of the frescoes.
Tourist Information
Location: Malcontenta di Mira (Venice District)
Hours: Tuesday and Saturday, 9:00 a. m.-12:00 noon
Also by appointment, telephone 041/520-3966
La Rotunda
La Rotonda is situated atop a hill in suburban Vicenza. Its four facades look out upon cultivated fields on three sides and a wooded slope on the fourth.
The central dome, one of Palladio's most famous and imitated motifs, was itself inspired by the Pantheon of ancient Rome.
Paolo Almerico, a papal prelate, commissioned Villa Rotonda in 1566 upon his return to Vicenza after a long residence in Rome. Palladio's protege Vincenzo Scamozzi oversaw completion of the structure following Palladio's death in 1580.
The villa was acquired and restored to its present condition in the 20th century by the Valmarana family of Venice.
Tourist Information.
Location: Vicenza
Hours: March-December only
Villa and grounds: Wednesdays 10:00-12:00 a. m., 3:00 p. m.-6:00 p. m.
Grounds only: Daily (except Monday) 10:00.-12:00 a. m., 3:00 p. m.-6:00 p. m.
Palladio's 12 Lost Villas
Villas that have been destroyed or no longer contain significant Palladian elements. Villas in brackets were not constructed.
A. Villa Thiene Quinto Vicentino (Vicenza) 1547/6-47/8
B. Villa Arnaldi Meledo Alto di Sarego (Vicenza) [cf 1547, 1565]
C. Villa Angarano-Bianchi Michiel Angarano di Bassano del Grappa (Vicenza) 1548
D. [Villa Ragona] Ghizzole di Montegaldela (Vicenza) —
E. [Villa Trissino-Facchini] Meledo di Sarego 1558?-62?
F. Villa Mocengo "sopra la Brenta" Dolo (Venezia) 1554-63
G. Villa Thiene Cicogna di Villafranca Padovana (Padova) 1554?-56
H. Villa Repeta Campiglia dei Berici (Vicenza) [cf 1557-8?]
I. Villa Mocenigo Marocco di Mogliano Veneto (Treviso) [cf 1561-2]
J. Villa Sarego Miega di Veronella (Verona) 1552/3?-69
K. Villa Valmarana-Scagnaroli Lisiera di Bolzano Vicentino (Vicenza) c. 1563-6, 1579-80
L. Villa Sarego Veronella (Verona) [cf 1564, 1569]
THE CREATION OF A SYSTEMATIC, COMMUNICABLE ARCHITECTURE
In the panorama of 16th-century architecture, Palladio is an exceptional figure. He came not from central Italy, as by birth or training did all the major architects who influenced him, but from the Veneto: he was born in Padua, but from the age of 16 lived and worked in Vicenza. He was also unusual in that he was not a painter by training (like Bramante, Raphael, Peruzzi and Giulio Romano) nor a sculptor (like Sansovino and Michelangelo) but a stonemason. In fact, were it not for his contact from the mid or later 1530s onwards with the Vicentine writer and nobleman, Giangiorgio Trissino (1478-1550), Palladio would probably have remained a skilled and intelligent craftsman, capable perhaps of designing portals and funerary monuments, but without the culture and intellectual skills by this time necessary in a true architect. He certainly would not have been transformed into the famous architect messer Andrea Palladio, the fine Roman name which Trissino invented for him.
Trissino was important for Palladio in many ways: he was himself a talented amateur architect, in line with up-to-date architecture in Rome. Trissino, who had been a member of the inner cultural circle around the Medici Pope Leo X and had known Raphael, would have been familiar with the villa of Poggio a Caiano, designed by the patron, Lorenzo de' Medici and his architect, Giuliano da Sangallo. At Poggio one finds anticipations of Palladio's hierarchical grouping of rooms of different sizes around a vaulted central hall, as well as the application for the first time, of a temple front to the façade of a Renaissance residential building. At Cricoli Trissino already employed a system of rooms of different sizes, and a scheme of interrelated proportions and thereby established what became a key element in Palladio's system of design.
Trissino was of great importance for Palladio in other ways. he almost certainly had a determining role in recommending Palladio to his fellow Vicentine patricians in the early years of his activity. It was with Trissino too that Palladio made his visits to Rome in the 1540s, which opened his eyes as to the character of ancient and modern architecture in the city, which till then he would have known only through drawings. Thirty years later Palladio recalled that he found the ancient buildings "worthy of much greater attention, than I had at first thought". The impact on him of these works was extremely powerful, and furnished him with a wide range of models which he immediately adapted to his commissions.
Trissino probably also guided Palladio in his initial reading and Vitruvius. It is not known whether Palladio could read Latin; even if he could not by the 1540s it was already possible to have access to many important Latin and Greek works in Italian translations. This must have greatly aided Palladio in his efforts to acquire a wide ranging culture, and to assimilate texts that presented difficulties even for scholars.
TRISSINO AND THE LINGUISTIC ASPECTS OF PALLADIO'S ARCHITECTURE
If we return to the question of the ways in which Palladio resembles and differs from his contemporaries, and the authors of the "modern classics" which he studied in Rome and elsewhere, there emerges what is probably the greatest debt that he owed to Trissino. Bramante, Raphael, Peruzzi, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, Giulio Romano, Falconetto, Sanmicheli and Sansovino all had a considerable influence on Palladio when he was in his thirties. All of them employed the classical orders in their works, in a way which was relatively consistent and represented a compromise between Vitruvius' specifications, and the observable practice of ancient Roman architects. All of them incorporated into their works both planimetric and elevation schemes derived from the Antique. And in all this they were similar to Palladio.
The great difference however between these architects and Palladio was that from the late 1540s onwards the Vicentine architect makes use of a standard series of overall types, of room shapes, of forms for the orders. He saw the distance between the columns as an integral part of each order, with for instance two and a quarter column diameters serving as the intercolumniation for the Ionic order, and two for the Corinthian. The order thus becomes - for the first time in Renaissance architecture - a potential generator both of two dimensional and three dimensional schemes. His work displays an adherence to a system of design, which makes use of a grammar of forms and proportions, and a "controlled vocabulary" of motifs. His immediate predecessors and elder contemporaries are less systematic: They were in a sense inventing and changing the rules as they went along, developing as architects from work to work. They were also often faced with such novel and unusual commissions.
Palladio too was faced sometimes with unique, "one off", problems: the Logge of the Basilica in Vicenza, palazzo Chiericati, the Teatro Olimpico, his two great Venetian churches, the Rialto bridge. But the bulk of his commissions were for town and above all country houses, where the needs and requirements were roughly similar. No architect up to that time had had as many commissions for villas and palaces. This made the establishment of standard optimal forms and dimensions desirable, not least as a way of reducing the amount of work which was needed to design an individual building. Early on in his architectural career Palladio realised that it was not necessary to decide for each house how wide and high the interior doors should be, what forms stairs should have, or what profile and proportions to give to the Doric capital. It was enough to decide on a set of standard forms to be modified, certainly, when necessary, but in general applicable in most projects. Palladio's architecture therefore, more than that of any other Renaissance architect, is founded upon a set of carefully worked out, conceptually pre-fabricated elements.
Common sense entered into the elaboration of this system; so too did the working habits of craftsmen and stone masons in Venice and the Veneto. Venetian masons had long been accustomed to order blocks in standard sizes from the quarries, and to use standard forms and sizes for doors, windows, columns. But overlaying Palladio's concern with creating an architecture of fixed forms, fixed proportions, regularly implemented principles, is a conscious attitude, which probably derives from the many hours and days he must have spent in discussion with Trissino. Trissino was one of the leading writers on orthography, grammar and literary theory of his time. Like others of his literary contemporaries he was concerned with the most appropriate form for written Italian, in a period in which no standard literary version of the language existed, apart from the Tuscan forms employed by Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Trissino however went beyond a concern with the most "correct" form of Italian, to a realisation that literary effect depends on grammar and choice of vocabulary. It may be that Trissino himself saw the parallel between linguistic structure and a structured approach to architectural design; alternatively Palladio by a process of intellectual osmosis, helped by his reading of Vitruvius and Alberti, may have transferred Trissino's view of the relation between literary style and linguistic rules to architecture.
His architecture in any case assumed a linguistic and grammatical character, which was recognised and approved by humanist intellectuals, like his friend and patron Daniele Barbaro. For Barbaro and his well educated friends, Palladio offered something which even the great and the richly inventive Sansovino could not: a truly rational architecture, based not only on the application of reason and principles derived from nature, but structured along the lines of humanist linguistics. Barbaro's preference for Palladio's systematic approach to architecture led him to obtain for the Vicentine architect from the late 1550s onwards a series of major ecclesiastical commissions in Venice itself (the façade of San Francesco della Vigna, the refectory and church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the rebuilding of the Convento della Carità) which might otherwise have fallen to the elderly but still much respected Sansovino.
PALLADIO'S EMERGENCE AS AN ARCHITECT
It is not clear exactly how Palladio passed from manually executing demanding details like capitals, and probably also designing small scale works, to becoming a full-time architect, working not with mason's tools, but with his mind, his books, his pen and ruler, and his drawings after the antique. He is documented as making a design for the villa Godi in 1540, but his intervention there was at this time probably restricted in scope, as the foot-print of the great villa had probably already been established, and does not correspond to Palladio's preferred division of a villa plan into suites of rooms (usually three) of different shapes and sizes. More important was his work on the palazzo Civena (for four moneyed but socially unimportant brothers) for which several drawings survive. The palace had originally belonged to Trissino's friend Aurelio Dall'Acqua, and one can suspect that Palladio and Trissino may have made designs for rebuilding the palace even before it was acquired, in 1540, by the Civena family.
With Palladio's unexecuted designs for the villa Pisani at Bagnolo, and other drawings for villas from around 1542 one can see for the first time the impact of Palladio's first visit to Rome. Motifs from the baths, from the Cortile del Belvedere and the villa Madama appear, in enthusiastic abundance. In the final design these features were simplified and reduced, to leave more space for living rooms, and to spare the patrons' pockets. The architecture which emerges however in Palladio's work around 1542, with high barrel-vaulted or cross-vaulted halls, ample loggie and column screens, stays with Palladio throughout his career, waiting the moment when it can be put to the best use, as in the churches of San Giorgio Maggiore and the Redentore in Venice. Even the villa Pisani as built is astonishing in the grandeur of its absidally terminated loggia and its great vaulted hall: a similar height and magnificence at his date would have been familiar to contemporaries only in major churches, and its architecture must have surprised, even shocked, many of those who saw it for the first time.
VILLA ARCHITECTURE
By 1550 Palladio had produced a whole group of villas, whose scale and decoration can be seen as closely matching the wealth and social standing of the owners: the powerful and very rich Pisani, bankers and Venetian patricians, had huge vaults and a loggia façade realised with stone piers and rusticated Doric pilasters; the (briefly) wealthy minor noble and salt-tax farmer Taddeo Gazzotto in his villa at Bertesina, had pilasters executed in brick, though the capitals and bases were carved in stone; Biagio Saraceno at Finale had a loggia with three arched bays, but without any architectural order. In the villa Saraceno as in the villa Poiana Palladio was able to give presence and dignity to an exterior simply by the placing and orchestration of windows, pediments, loggia arcades: his less wealthy patrons must have appreciated the possibility of being able to enjoy impressive buildings without having to spend much on stone and stone carving.
Palladio's reputation initially, and after his death, has been founded on his skill as a designer of villas. Considerable damage had been done to houses, barns, and rural infrastructures during the War of the League of Cambrai (1509-1517). Recovery of former levels of prosperity in the countryside was probably slow, and it was only in the 1540s, with the growth of the urban market for foodstuffs and determination at government level to free Venice and the Veneto from dependence on imported grain, above all grain coming from the always threatening Ottoman state, that a massive investment in agriculture and the structures necessary for agricultural production gathers pace. Landowners for decades had been steadily, under stable Venetian rule, been buying up small holdings, and consolidating their estates not only by purchase, but by swaps of substantial properties with the other landowners. Investment in irrigation and land reclamation through drainage further increased the income of wealthy landowners.
Palladio's villas - that is the houses of estate owners - met a need for a new type of country residence. His designs implicitly recognise that it was not necessary to have a great palace in the countryside, modelled directly on city palaces, as many late 15th-century villas (like the huge villa da Porto at Thiene) in fact are. Something smaller, often with only one main living floor was adequate as a centre for controlling the productive activity from which much of the owner's income probably derived and for impressing tenants and neighbours as well as entertaining important guests. These residences, though sometimes smaller than earlier villas, were just as effective for establishing a social and political presence in the countryside, and for relaxing, hunting, and getting away from the city, which was always potentially unhealthy.
Façades, dominated by pediments usually decorated with the owner's coat of arms, advertised a powerful presence across a largely flat territory, and to be seen did not need to be as high as the owner's city palace. Their loggie offered a pleasant place to eat, or talk, or perform music in the shade, activities which one can see celebrated in villa decoration, for instance in the villa Caldogno. In their interior Palladio distributed functions both vertically and horizontally. Kitchens, store-rooms, laundries and cellars were in the low ground floor; the ample space under the roof was used to store the most valuable product of the estate, grain, which incidentally also served to insulate the living rooms below. On the main living floor, used by family and their guests, the more public rooms (loggia, sala) were on the central axis, while left and right were symmetrical suites of rooms, going from large rectangular chambers, via square middling sized rooms, to small rectangular ones, sometimes used as by the owner as studies or offices for administering the estate.
The owner's house was often not the only structure for which Palladio was responsible. Villas, despite their unfortified appearance and their open loggie were still direct descendants of castles, and were surrounded by a walled enclosure, which gave them some necessary protection from bandits and marauders. The enclosure (cortivo) contained barns, dovecote towers, bread ovens, chicken sheds, stables, accommodation for factors and domestic servants, places to make cheese, press grapes, etc. Already in the 15th century it was usual to create a court in front of the house, with a well, separated from the farmyard with its barns, animals, and threshing-floor. Gardens, vegetable and herbal gardens, fishponds, and almost invariably a large orchard (the brolo) all were clustered around, or located inside the main enclosure.
Palladio in his designs sought to co-ordinate all these varied elements, which in earlier complexes had usually found their place not on the basis of considerations of symmetry vista and architectural hierarchy but of the shape of the available area, usually defined by roads and water courses. Orientation was also important: Palladio states in the Quattro Libri that barns should face south so as to keep the hay dry, thus preventing it from fermenting and burning. Palladio found inspiration in large antique complexes which either resembled country houses surrounded by their outbuildings or which he actually considered residential layouts - an example is the temple of Hercules Victor at Tivoli, which he had surveyed. It is clear, for instance, that the curving barns which flank the majestic façade of the villa Badoer were suggested by what was visible of the Forum of Augustus. In his book Palladio usually shows villa layouts as symmetrical: he would have known however that often, unless the barns to the left and right of the house faced south, as at the villa Barbaro at Maser, the complex would not have been built symmetrically. An example is the villa Poiana, where the large barn, with fine Doric capitals, was certainly designed by Palladio. It faces south, and is not balanced by a similar element on the other side of the house.
PALACES
Between 1542 and 1550 Palladio was involved with the design of three major city palaces, all in Vicenza: the palazzo Thiene, the palazzo Porto, and the palazzo Chiericati. If the economic base of the leading families of the Veneto cities was largely in the countryside, their political life was centered in the cities, where most palace builders and owners controlled the affairs of the city as city councillors. The nobility in cities like Vicenza and Verona was usually grouped into two opposing "factions", one pro-French and pro-Venetian, the other pro-Spanish, thus reflecting the divisions in the international scene. These were in a sense predecessors of political parties, though they were above all expressions of a network of client-patron relationships, and often violently animated by family vendettas and hatreds. The faction leaders, like the Thiene and Porto on the one hand, and the pro-Spanish Valmarana on the other, had a particular need to express their pre-eminence in a large and opposing palaces. Palladio's reputation was such that leading figures from the opposing factions sought designs from him.
The first of the major palaces with which Palladio was involved, the palazzo Thiene, was begun in 1542 for Marcantonio Thiene and his brother, the richest individuals in the city at that time. On stylistic grounds, on the basis of the testimony of Inigo Jones, and because of the close links of the aristocratic Thiene with the Gonzaga, rulers of Mantua, it seems likely that the initial design was made by the Gonzaga court architect, Giulio Romano, who visited Vicenza in 1542. Palladio, who had not yet achieved any real fame or standing as an architect, would have been employed initially only as the executing architect, to realise the designs of the admired Giulio Romano. After Giulio's death in 1546, he had the opportunity to impose his own ideas and motifs on the building, which he published in the Quattro Libri as entirely his own work. This collaboration with Giulio was probably of great importance for Palladio: it gave him the opportunity to have contact with a very sophisticated and experienced architect, whose memories went back to the last years of Raphael's life.
THE EMERGENCE OF PALLADIO'S PERSONAL STYLE
In the palazzo Porto, the villa Poiana, the Basilica and palazzo Chiericati Palladio completes his assimilation of lessons learned from his leading contemporaries; he passes from the eclecticism of the early 1540s to the formulation of his own distinctive language. He also displays an architectural intelligence of a high order. In the Basilica, for instance, he produced a monumental screen of particular magnificence around the pre-existing core (shopping mall below, the huge hall for the city's courts above). The structure, realised in solid stone, despite its Roman appearance, is almost Gothic in its combination of lightness and strength.
Following a suggestion offered by the amphitheatres at Arles and Nîmes, the half columns of the piers and the entablature broken out over them constitute an effective way of buttressing and reinforcing the main bearing element, which has to resist the thrust of the vaults behind - the earlier loggie, which Palladio's structure replaced, had in fact suffered structural collapse. Combined with the strong but narrow piers, Palladio's adoption of the serliana motif, which had been used by Sansovino in the Libreria, and by Giulio Romano (for instance in the interior of the abbey church of San Benedetto Po) was a brilliant choice. It enabled the maximum of light to penetrate into the interior of the building (the amount of light is also increased by the oculi in the spandrels) and made it possible to absorb unavoidable irregularities in the elevation discreetly, almost imperceptibly, in the space between the small columns and the piers, leaving the large elements, the piers and the arches, regular and equal.
The refinement of Palladio's design, in which functional, structural and aesthetic elements all play a part is to be seen even in details, like the choice of cylindrical (i.e. Vitruvian Tuscan) bases for the small Doric columns, in the place of normal attic bases. This is a functional move, for the cylindrical bases, without any plinth, do not project to trip up those who enter or leave the building; at the same time the simplification of the form of the base (maintained at the upper level as well) is a way of avoiding too much fussy small-scale detail, and of enhancing the impact of the large attic bases.
It should be added that Palladio did not merely design an exterior. Originally the cross-vaults over the broad transverse passages were covered with clean white plaster, in which pulverised stone was a component. The inside therefore read as a continuation of the exterior, even in its colour and surface texture, a grand Roman space comparable to the market hall of Trajan's Forum, and with a large serliana at the end of the vista. The present grimy state of the unplastered brick vaults, deprives us of the impressive spatial experience created by Palladio.
A chronological account of his work after 1550 has to take account of the further enrichment of his architectural culture in the 1550s, as a result of his close collaboration with another great intellectual figure, the Venetian patrician Daniele Barbaro. It was Palladio who provided almost all the illustrations for Barbaro's monumental translation (with full commentary) of Vitruvius. This effort further defined Palladio's architectural language; it also crystallised for him certain motifs which he was to use constantly in his designs, like the pedimented temple front for villas, and the giant order with free-standing columns, spanning two floors, derived from his own reconstruction of Vitruvius' Basilica at Fano. Palladio realised this impressive solution in stone at the villa Serego.
Other works, like the undecorated but beautiful and structurally elegant wooden bridge a Bassano will have to be passed over here. Nor is there space to analyse one of Palladio's very last works, the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, a learned, but also miraculously vital resuscitation of the layout of the ancient Roman theatre.
THE QUATTRO LIBRI AND PALLADIO'S INFLUENCE
One of Palladio's most impressive creations cannot pass without mention, for it has so much to do with this exhibition. Palladio's Quattro libri (Venice, 1570), is his influential architectural testament, in which he set out his formulae for the orders, for room sizes, for stairs and for the design of detail. In the Fourth book he published restorations of the Roman temples which he had studied most closely, and in the Second and Third books (as no architect had done until then) offered a sort of retrospective exhibition of his own designs for palaces, villas, public buildings and bridges.
Concise and clear in its language, effective in its communication of complex information through the co-ordination of plates and texts, the Quattro libri represents the most effective illustrated architectural publication up to that time. The intelligence and clarity of the "interface" which Palladio offers to his readers can be seen if one compares it to Serlio's architectural books, which started to appear in 1537. Whereas Serlio does not inscribe dimensions on the plates, but laboriously rehearses them in the small print of text, Palladio frees the text of this encumbrance, and places the measurements directly on the plans and elevations. Unlike Serlio, Palladio presents buildings and details in a uniform fashion, redraws drawings that he derived from other architects, and presents all dimensions in a standard unit of measurement, the Vicentine foot of 0.357 mm.
It was therefore not only Palladio's architecture, with its rational basis, its clear grammar, its bias towards domestic projects, but the effectiveveness of his book as a means of communication that led to the immense influence of Palladio on the development of architecture in northern Europe, and later in North America.
Of course Palladio - as Inigo Jones for instance knew - did not spell out all his secrets in the Quattro libri. He did not say exactly how to design according to a system, without being boring or repeating oneself; he did not say exactly when or how to break his own rules; he did not tell how to use drawing as a way of generating many ideas and designs from a single initial scheme, or why it was important always to make alternative designs. And he did not explain how to design details that would be just right, not on all buildings, but only on a specific building, as the windows of the villa Poiana are just right for that villa, or those of the villa Rotonda for the Rotonda. In writing the Quattro libri he certainly wanted to educate, to improve general standards of architectural design. But like all good teachers (and all masters with apprentices) perhaps he knew that it is better to leave the pupils something to find out for themselves.
No comments:
Post a Comment