In Vicenza, which in 49 B.C. it became a Roman municipium, in the corner of the cardo with the current Lampertico contrà was the domus, a residential area for the wealthy people of Vicenza. In the 2nd century AD. one of these houses was enlarged with an apsidal hall called domus ecclesiae and became a meeting place for the first Christians. At the end of the 14th century in that place, the Cathedral was built with a semicircular apse and three naves. In 425, while Marcello of the Roman gens Azia was lord in the city, the hordes of Attila arrive and devastate Vicenza, destroying, among other things, the Cathedral which was painstakingly rebuilt with three naves.
In 1117 a terrible earthquake destroyed the church which was rebuilt with 5 naves. In 1236 the troops of Frederick II sacked the city and caused considerable damage to the Cathedral. In 1261 the bishop Bartolomeo da Breganze brought with him a holy thorn from the crown of Jesus, given to him by King Louis IX of France. He immediately started the construction of the temple of S. Corona while in 1265 he gave impetus to the reconstruction of the cathedral with dimensions similar to the current one. The present appearance dates back to 1444/1467 when the Gothic facade was completed. In the second half of the 16th century, the tambour and the great dome were erected on a project by Andrea Palladio. The interior is in Gothic style: a single nave with a cross vault, an elevated presbytery in the center of which stands the altar commissioned by Aurelio Dall'Acqua in 1535 to the master stonemasons of Pedemuro; the altar preserves a fragment of the Holy Cross. Behind and to the side of this, along the apse, the Civran Parament consists of 12 large paintings that tell the story of the true Cross, commissioned in 1679 by Bishop Giuseppe Civran and executed by 7 artists of the Venetian school. The vestment is crowned and embellished with a balustrade with 10 wooden angels, some by Orazio Marinali. The large nave has various side chapels including the Thiene chapel and the Loschi chapel. Important funeral monuments and sculptures by Giulio Romano, Alessandro Vittoria and others. Noteworthy are the paintings by, among others, Alessandro Maganza, Giulio Carpioni, Bartolomeo Montagna, Francesco Maffei, Gianbattista Pittoni and many others. On 15/05/1944 an Anglo-American bombing struck the cathedral, destroying the dome, a large part of the nave and seriously damaged the facade and the southern chapels. In 2009, the artist from Vicenza from Castelgomberto Pino Castagna created the bronze altar, the ambo, the episcopal chair, as well as the Easter candle holder, a processional cross and candelabra. Adriano Bevilacqua