Museo Civico

Save your Teatro Olimpico entry ticket for access to the Museo Civico, housed in one of Palladio’s finest buildings, designed in 1550 with a colonnaded ground floor and double-height loggia flanked by vast sun porches. The lavishly frescoed ground floor includes the ultimate baroque party room: the Sala dal Firmamento (Salon of the Skies), with Domenico Brusasorci’s ceiling fresco of Diana the moon goddess in her chariot, galloping across the sky to meet the sun. The upstairs painting galleries present works by Vicenza masters in the context of major works by Venetian masters (Veronese, Tiepolo, Tintoretto), Hans Memling’s minutely detailed Crucifix, action-packed works by Jacopo Bassano, Elisabetta Marchioni’s bodacious still lifes, and Giambattista Piazzetta’s swirling, high-drama 1729 masterpiece, The Ecstasy of St Francis.