Andrea Palladio (1508-1580) is widely considered the most influential architect in the history of Western architecture. He revolutionized architecture by adapting ancient Greek and Roman architectural motifs to churches, government buildings and country villas of his day. Through his "Four Books of Architecture," he influenced everyone from Sir Christopher Wren to Thomas Jefferson to itinerant carpenters on the American frontier.
Indulge me please. I am from Cleveland, which is slightly above Detroit in Culture, and for Vicenza to agree to be a "sister-city" to Cleveland is like Princess Diane or Jacqueline Kennedy agreeing to adopt an "urchin" as a sister. :) :)
Asolo, Italy -- .as I discovered..., is a small, heavenly Italian hill town (population, 1,500). It perches above wooded slopes on the edge of the agricultural and industrial plain, or
pianura, which extends north and west from Venice and the Adriatic Sea to the foothills of the Dolomites, the towering limestone peaks that form the eastern buttress of the Italian Alps.
Beloved by the English poet Robert Browning and the early-20th-century travel writer Freya Stark, Asolo has superb restaurants, arcaded streets lined with shops, great bars and sidewalk cafes, a lively main piazza and a beautiful church installed with religious paintings by the important Renaissance artists Lorenzo Lotto and Jacopo Bassano.
For lovers of Renaissance architecture, Asolo also makes an excellent base for day trips to the world famous Renaissance villas of Andrea Palladio in and around nearby cities, such as Vicenza, Palladio's home town.
From Asolo, we found great destinations in every direction. When we returned each day, we left behind the busy gas stations, factories and shopping strips that line the main arteries nearby and ascended the quiet, fragrant, tree-covered slopes that led to Asolo's cozy, cobbled streets.
There, we plotted the next day's expedition..of the Veneto, the region that arcs around Venice....Palladio (1508-1580) revolutionized architecture by adapting ancient Greek and Roman architectural motifs to churches, government buildings and country villas of his day. Through his "Four Books of Architecture," he influenced everyone from Sir Christopher Wren to Thomas Jefferson to itinerant carpenters on the American frontier.
A cruise along Shaker Boulevard in Shaker Heights (in Cleveland, OH ) is all that's needed to see Palladio's reach. Just about every other house features a simplified version of the classical temple facades Palladio perfected for his Venetian clients.
To see Palladio's influence is to feel a desire to see the real thing, which means traveling to the Veneto (accent on the first syllable), the architect's home region.
I'd read books about Palladio by art historian James Ackerman and other authors, but photographs and floor plans printed on a printed page can never substitute for direct experience.
Setting out every day in a different direction rather than book one of the guided tours that packages visits to the villas and other sights in the region, we rented a car and did our own navigating. Armed with maps, guidebooks and instructions from the concierge at our hotel (the excellent Albergo Al Sole), we set out every day in a different direction, interspersing visits to Palladian villas with side trips to cities within a two-hour drive, including Verona, Vicenza and Trento.
One terrific destination nearby is Possagno, birthplace of Antonio Canova, the great early-19th-century neoclassical sculptor, whose "Terpsichore" is a highlight of the permanent collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Possagno is home to the Canova Museum and Gipsoteca, which houses the artist's studio and plaster versions of Canova sculptures, including the Cleveland "Terpsichore." The museum also includes an addition built in the 1950s by the great Italian modern architect Carlo Scarpa, a work of art in its own right....
Palatial Villa Barbaro
is a masterpiece From Asolo, fortunately, you don't have to go far to find a Palladian masterpiece. On the first morning of our stay, we climbed into our rented Lancia and descended one of the narrow, winding, one-lane roads that runs downhill, out of town.
Within minutes, we were at Maser, a small farm town nearby. We cruised slowly... searching for the driveway to Palladio's Villa Barbaro. Suddenly, we spotted our objective off the highway to the left -- a palatial home that resembled a Roman temple flanked by two broad wings topped with large dovecotes. Set atop a hill, it struck a commanding pose, as if claiming dominion over everything around it. ...
We soon crunched across pea-gravel pathways and ascended to the main level of the house, the piano nobile, and donned large, fluffy slippers, which fit over our shoes and were intended to protect the smoothly polished terrazzo floors inside.
Alone except for a solitary guard, we padded from room to room, marveling at fresco paintings on the walls by Paolo Veronese, a great Venetian Renaissance painter admired for his fluent brushwork and his ability to transcribe the pearly light of the Veneto with a freshness that anticipated French Impressionism 350 years later.
The paintings depicted not only gods and goddesses from Greek and Roman mythology, but members of the original Barbaro household. In one scene, the grande dame leans over a balustrade as if to greet guests. In another, an impish daughter pokes her head through a trompe l'oeil doorway, as if caught by surprise in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek.
From the Villa Barbaro we set off for other Palladian villas, including the magnificently austere Villa Emo in Fanzolo di Vedelago, and the splendid Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese.
The Villa Cornaro is owned by an American's Sally and Carl Gable, who open the house to tourists on a regular basis. In her lively book, "Palladian Days," Sally Gable describes what it's like to own and restore a Palladian villa, and to join community life in a small Italian town.
Gable's book is a great read, and a terrific way to prepare for a trip to the Veneto. Also excellent is Witold 'Rybczynski's "The Perfect House," a house-by-house description of the principal Palladian villas. It is the perfect guide for a tour of the villas, and I noticed other travelers carrying their own copies.
Driving from one Palladian villa to another is something like a road rally. You plot your course through a half-dozen small towns, taking care not to get disoriented while curving around one of the scores of roundabouts Italians prefer instead of four-way intersections with stop signs or traffic lights.
Because the villas operate on different schedules, it's easy to become part of a small troupe of vehicles leaving or pulling up in rhythmic succession at each stop as the villas close or open at various points throughout the day.
The most challenging villa to find was the most famous: the Villa Almerico Capra Valmarana, better known as the Villa Rotonda because a large, central dome surmounts the structure....Beautifully sited atop a hill, the house seems to share DNA with a half-dozen state capitols around the United States, plus key buildings on the campuses of the University of Virginia and Columbia University.
The interior of the villa is a strangely theatrical space, with four identical suites of rooms organized around a soaring and overdecorated central space topped by the dome. The effect is dizzying and disorienting. No matter which direction you turn, the architecture seems to stay the same; only the landscape outside changes.
In Vicenza proper, we found that a short walk up the city's principal street, Corso Andrea Palladio, leads to a half-dozen Palladian masterpieces, including the Basilica Palladiana, a municipal building with arched arcades on two sides for all-season markets.
Palladio's Teatro Olimpico, at the eastern end of the Corso, contains an elaborately fabricated shallow stage that exploits linear perspective to create the illusion of five streets converging on a central piazza. Even when there's no show, the amphitheater-style seats are filled with visitors who marvel at the architectural spectacle.
Vicenza may seem distant, but the city is building ties to Cleveland; last April, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson visited Vicenza to sign a document creating a gemellaggio, a "twin" sister-city collaboration between the two cities. The idea is to promote exchanges around business and industry.
Cleveland couldn't have a more desirable partner in Italy. Apart from any commercial developments created by the cross-fertilization, the agreement could encourage cultural exchanges with one of the most beautiful cities in Italy and greater appreciation for the Veneto -- a region well worth exploring, no matter which town you pick as a home base.
