The Rough Guide to Venice and the Veneto

At the Corso Palladio end is the Palazzo Valmarana (no. 16), where Palladio’s
use of overlapping planes makes the design of the facade legible in the narrow
street and at the same time integrates the palace with the flanking buildings.
Take a peep at the uncompleted courtyard – the finished section constitutes
no more than a third of the projected palace.
In the other direction you’ll come across the Piazza San Lorenzo, on one side
of which stands Francesco Muttoni’s Palazzo Repeta, now the Banca d’Italia,
with the thirteenth-century Franciscan church of San Lorenzo (Mon–Sat
10.30am–noon & 3.30–6pm, Sun 3.30–6pm) opposite. The fourteenth-century
marble portal of the west front is the best feature of the church – the
dimensions of the interior are impressive, but the church is rather barren in
comparison with others of the same period in the Veneto, such as San Nicolò
at Treviso or San Zanipolo and the Frari in Venice. Montagna’s fresco of the
Beheading of St Paul, in the chapel on the left side of the chancel, may once
have been stunning, but it’s now looking pretty tattered. The cloister is worth
a visit, though, even if the monastic calm has given way to the noise of traffic
and the neighbouring school.
Further along, where the arcades give out, is the church of Santa Maria del
Carmine; founded in the fourteenth century but redone in the nineteenth,
it has pictures by Montagna, Veronese and Jacopo Bassano that more than
compensate for the peculiar decor – although you’ll need infrared vision to
make them out on an overcast day.
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Vicenza, Verona and around
| Vicenza
The fringes of the centre
If the Museo Civico’s collection has led to your acquiring a taste for Francesco
Maffei’s work, you’ll not want to miss the Oratorio di San Nicola
(April–Oct Thurs 9am–noon & Sun 3.30–7pm; free guided tours on Thurs),
which has a welter of paintings by him and his contemporary Carpioni.
Maffei’s delirious altarpiece – The Trinity – is like a superheated homage to
Tintoretto.
The Oratorio stands by the side of Vicenza’s other river, the Retrone, at the
foot of its most picturesque bridge, the humpbacked Ponte San Michele,
built in 1620. You can follow a pleasant loop on the south side of the river
by going straight ahead off the bridge to the Piazza dei Gualdi, then basically
following your nose (bear to the right), so that you go past the thirteenth-century
gate called the Portòn del Luzzo and recross the Retrone by the Ponte
Furo, from where there’s a good view of the Basilica and Torre di Piazza. The
long building on the opposite bank is Palladio’s unexceptional first project in
the city, the Casa Civena (c.1540).
Another area just out of the centre that’s worth a look is on the far side of the
Bacchiglione from the Teatro Olimpico. The bridge leads onto the major traffic
confluence of Piazza Venti Settembre: the building with porticoes on two
facades is the Palazzo Angaran – fifteenth-century, but rebuilt. In adjacent
Contrà Venti Settembre there’s the house with the best preserved of Vicenza’s
exterior frescoes, the fifteenth-century Palazzo Regaù.
Don’t miss the church of Santi Felice e Fortunato either (Mon–Sat 9–11am
& 3.30–6.30pm, Sun 3.30–6.30pm). It’s on the opposite side of town, about
ten minutes’ walk along the Corso of the same name, from the entrance to
the Giardino Salvi (daily 7.30am–8pm), a compact little park whose winding
gravel paths are punctuated by unconvincing replicas of great sculptures. Dating
back to immediately after the Edict of Constantine (313 AD), the basilica
is the oldest church in Vicenza, and is approached by a path littered with
ancient sarcophagi and architectural fragments. Wrecked by barbarian invad-