Things to do in Vicenza
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Gallerie di Palazzo Leoni Montanari
From the outside it looks like a bank, but a treasure beyond accountants’ imagining awaits inside the Gallerie di Palazzo Leoni Montanari. Ascend past the nymphs along the extravagant stuccoed staircase to grand salons filled with Canaletto’s misty lagoon landscapes and Pietro Longhi society satires such as Tutors of Venier’s House, which shows a sassy child with hand on hip wearing out exasperated tutors collapsed in their chairs. Upstairs is Banca Intesa’s superb collection of some 400 Russian icons, gorgeously spotlit in darkened galleries with a recording of soft Gregorian chants setting the scene. Each room elicits audible gasps: bright-eyed saints haloed in si…
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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 b…
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Teatro Olimpico
Behind a charming walled garden prime for picnics lies a Renaissance marvel: Teatro Olimpico, which Palladio began in 1580 with inspiration from Roman structures. Vincenzo Scamozzi finished the elliptical theatre after Palladio’s death, adding a stage set modelled on the ancient Greek city of Thebes, with streets built in steep perspective to give the illusion of a city sprawling towards a distant horizon. The theatre was inaugurated in 1585 with a performance of Oedipus Rex but soon fell into disuse – the ceiling caved in and the theatre remained abandoned for centuries until it was restored at last in 1934. Today, Italian performers have vied to make an entrance on th…
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La Rotonda
Palladio’s Villa Capra is better known as La Rotonda. No matter how you look at it, this villa is a show-stopper: the namesake dome caps a square base, with colonnaded facades on all four sides. This is one of Palladio’s most admired creations, inspiring villa variations across Europe and the USA, including Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello (La Rotonda’s current owner, Mario di Valmarana, is a retired University of Virginia architecture professor). Inside, the circular central hall is frescoed from the walls to the soaring cupola with trompe l’œil frescoes. Out front, you can catch bus 8 (€1.50) back to Vicenza.
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Palazzo Barbaran
North of Corso Palladio, three Palladian beauties line Contrà Porti. The finest is the newly restored Palazzo Barbaran, built by Palladio c 1569–70 with a stately double row of columns on the facade and a delightful double-height courtyard loggia that seems to usher in the sunlight. Frothy stuccowork and Giambattista Zelotti’s frescoes of gambolling gods lift the roof right off spacious ground-floor galleries. If you use the bathroom under the stairs, take a moment to contemplate through the bathroom window Palladio’s clever use of cross-vaulting.
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Chiesa di Santa Corona
Two blocks east of Contrà Porti is a splendid sidestreet: Contrà di Santa Corona, named after Chiesa di Santa Corona. Built by the Dominicans in 1261 to house a relic from Christ’s crown of thorns, this Romanesque brick church also houses three light-filled masterpieces: Palladio’s 1576 Valmarana Chapel in the crypt, Paolo Veronese’s Adoration of the Magi, much praised by Goethe, and Giovanni Bellini’s radiant Baptism of Christ, where the holy event is witnessed by a trio of Veneto beauties and a curious red bird.
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Villa Valmarana ‘Ai Nani’
Villa Valmarana ‘ai Nani is covered with sublime 1757 frescoes by Giambattista Tiepolo and his son Giandomenico. Giambattista painted the Palazzina wing with his signature mythological epics, while his son painted the Foresteria with fanciful, themed rural, carnival and Chinese rooms. Nicknamed ‘ai Nani’ (gnomes) for the 17 garden gnome statues around the garden walls, this estate is a superb spot for a summer concert; check dates online.
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Basilica di Monte Berico
The hilltop Basilica di Monte Berico offers panoramic view of the Palladian city below. The basilica was built in the 18th century to replace a Gothic structure where the Virgin Mary herself is said to have made two appearances in 1426. An impressive 18th-century colonnade runs uphill to the church, roughly parallel to Viale X Giugno. Bus 18 (€1.50) runs here from Via Roma.
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Palazzo Breganze
Piazza Castello is lined with several grand edifices, including the oddly truncated Palazzo Breganze on the south side, designed by Palladio and built by Scamozzi (one of the city's leading 16th-century architects). Its couple of outsize columns look strange now, but had the building been completed it would have been one of the city's most imposing structures.
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Gastronomia Il Ceppo
San Daniele hams dangle over a 30ft counter filled with fresh seafood salads, house-made pastas and speciality cheese. Never mind that there’s no available seating: ask counter staff to pair your selections with a local bottle from their shelves for a dream picnic across the street in the Teatro Olimpico.
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Dai Nodari
Rustic fare gets hip in the heart of historic Vicenza, packing in local crowds for €7 lunches and €9 dinner menus featuring hearty chicken with wild local mushrooms, followed by Sachertorte, or local-speciality cheese plates featuring the seasoned, grappa-washed Bastardo di Grappa cheese.
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Antico Guelfo
This culinary hideaway is a hit with slow foodies for its inventive daily market menu, making the most of local specialities in such dishes as Amarone risotto or buckwheat crepes with Bastardo di Grappa cheese. The chef is a specialist in gluten-free cooking, and adapts dishes to any food sensitivity.
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Pitanta
An authentic osteria (pub-restaurant) showing true local pride, from the Vicenza football relics on the wall to the heaping plates of local bigoli (thick wheat pasta) with duck sauce for €6 and a glass of respectable house wine for €0.80.
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Palazzo Thiene
The bank building at No 12 Contrà Porti is Palazzo Thiene, begun under Palladio’s supervision c 1556–58 with rustic stone arches capped by gabled windows and elegant Corinthian pilasters, drawing the eye skyward.
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Antica Casa della Malvasia
Purveyor of wines since 1200, when Malvasia wine was imported from Greece by Venetian merchants. Today the menu covers 80 wines, including prime Italian Malvasia, plus 100 types of grappa grown just up the road in Bassano del Grappa.
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Sorarù
Drink in the history at this marble-topped bar, serving bracing espresso and cocktails surrounded by pastries made on the premises and tempting jars of candy stashed on carved-wood shelves.
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Al Bersagliere
This is a traditional osteria where you can eat cicheti (snacks) at the bar or proceed to the cosy little tables for seasonal cooking. It's big on sausages cold and warm.
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Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza
The Museo del Risorgimento e della Resistenza is dedicated to Italian reunification and the Resistance in the latter stages of WWII. It's located southeast of the train station.
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Enos
Hang out under the chandeliers at the cool cocktail bar, or head next door to pick your poison, using a reloadable plastic card, from self-service wine vending machines.
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Palazzo Valmarana
Palazzo Valmarana is considered one of Palladio's more eccentric creations, with the combination of two orders of pilasters in the main façade.
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Zí Teresa
A popular and cavernous place, 'Auntie Teresa' offers a big range of succulent pizzas and a chunky seafood risotto that tastes of the sea.
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Basilica Palladiana
Dazzling white Piovene stone arches frame shady double arcades in the Basilica Palladiana, designed in 1549.
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Museo Naturalistico e Archeologico
The Museo Naturalistico e Archeologico has a modest collection of local ancient artefacts.
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Palazzo Isoppo da Porto
Palladio designed Palazzo Isoppo da Porto, which remains unfinished.
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