Vicenza e il Palladio

Our guide will introduce you to Vicenza, a city worth enjoying and appreciating, one of the most beautiful places in Veneto and Italy, where architecture and city planning perfectly combine: palaces, villas, monuments and churches harmoniously contribute to the city's splendor. We'll have lunch in a renowned restaurant downtown, where we'll taste the famous "baccalà" (salt cod).
Vicenza's artistic history is closely related to the creative genius of Palladio, an architect appreciated worldwide.
Two are the criteria that allowed Vicenza to enter Unesco's world heritage list in 1994: the perfect combination between architecture and city planning and Palladio's contributions to the history of art are a role model for all modern and contemporary Europe. Here, in the 16th century, the great architect's reputation reached as far as the whole world thanks to the artistic patrimony he left to Vicenza's people: the palladian basilica, the Chiericati palace, the Olympic Theatre are the maximum expression of Palladio's artistic genius.

The city surprises for the villas designed for the aristocracy of the time (Valmarana palace, Barbaran de Porto palace, where the Palladio museum is, Schio palace), some important religious buildings, such as the cathedral and important public structures such as the monumental Scalette arch and the Palazzo della Ragione's loggias.
The UNESCO's acknowledgement was extended in 1996 also to 24 palladian villas around smaller villages distributed in Veneto region.
Extraordinary villas designed for noble families (Barbato, Corner, Emo, Grimani and Foscari) soon became an example even outside Italy.
Among them, we can't forget to mention Villa Almerico Capra also known as La Rotonda, one of the most celebrated buildings in modern age architecture.