The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

finished until the second decade of the next century, this was Palladio’s first
public project and secured his reputation. The architect himself, generally
regarded as a mild and modest individual, had no doubt as to its merit: “this
building can be compared to ancient ones and placed with the most beautiful
of the major buildings that have been made by the ancients”, he wrote in the
Quattro Libri. The monumental regularity of the Basilica disguises the fact
that the Palladian building is effectively a stupendous piece of buttressing
– the Doric and Ionic colonnades, constructed in Istrian stone, enclose the
fifteenth-century brick meeting hall of the city council, an unstable structure
that had defied a number of attempts to prop it up before Palladio’s solution
was put into effect. And if you look closely you’ll see that the colonnades
aren’t quite as regular as they first appear – Palladio had to vary the gaps
between the columns and pillars to accommodate the passageways that go
through the lower level. The vast Gothic hall, which has an impressive keel
roof, is now used for exhibitions, usually on an architectural theme.
Facing the Basilica across the Piazza dei Signori is a late Palladio building,
the unfinished Loggia del Capitaniato. Built as accommodation for the
Venetian military commander of the city (the Capitano), it’s decorated with
reliefs in celebration of the Venetian victory over the Turks at Lépanto in
1571. Had it been completed, the Loggia would have taken up much of the
area now occupied by the terrace of the Gran Caffè Garibaldi; houses used to
join onto the Loggia on that side, but they were demolished in the 1930s.
Completing the enclosure of this side of the piazza is the Monte di Pietà, put
up in two instalments in the first half of the sixteenth century, which brackets
the seventeenth-century church of San Vincenzo. The worryingly slender
Torre di Piazza reached its present altitude in 1444, having been started in
the twelfth century and raised in 1311; its clock is claimed to have been the
first such public timepiece in Italy. The obligatory lion of Saint Mark was
deposited on top of its column in the mid-fifteenth century, not long after
Venice took Vicenza to its bosom; the companion figure of the Redeemer
dates from the mid-seventeenth century.
As in the sixteenth century, a daily fruit, vegetable and flower market is
pitched at the back of the Basilica, in the Piazza dell’Erbe – glowered over
by medieval Torre del Tormento, once the prison tower. On Tuesdays a vast
general market hits town, spreading along the roads between the Basilica and
the duomo.
In Contrà Pigafetta, just a few metres down the slope from the Piazzetta Palladio,
on the duomo side of the Basilica, there’s Vicenza’s architectural oddity,
the Spanish-influenced Casa Pigafetta. Built in 1481, it was the birthplace of
Antonio Pigafetta, who set out with Magellan on his voyage of 1519 and kept
a record of the expedition. Unlike his leader, Pigafetta lived to see his home
town again. If you’re puzzled by the street name, contrà – sometimes contrada
– is the Vicentine dialect alternative to via.
The Duomo
The Duomo (Mon–Sat 10.30am–noon & 3.30–5/6pm, Sun 3.30–5pm
& 6–7pm), founded before the eighth century but substantially rebuilt
– chiefly from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century – was bombed to bits
in 1944 and carefully reconstructed after the war. It’s a blandly vast edifice,
notable primarily as one of the few Italian cathedrals to be upstaged by its
secular surroundings. A polyptych by Lorenzo Veneziano (fifth chapel on
right) and a Madonna by Montagna (fourth chapel on left) are the best of its
paintings.
Vicenza, Verona and around
| Vicenza
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