Everyone is ready, "dressed to the nines", here in Vicenza, in this week of April!
Not only for the arrival of spring, which colors it with the purple of the wisteria and gives it shades of new light, but also for a very significant occasion, which celebrates its value and beauty on a national and international level.
In fact, our city is preparing to celebrate 30 years of its inclusion in the UNESCO World Heritage list.
The first appearance of the site "City of Vicenza and Palladio's Villas in the Veneto" dates back to 1994: initially it was the historic center including 23 Palladian works and 3 suburban villas, to which in 1996 another 21 Venetian villas were added .
Our artistic, cultural and natural heritage therefore boasts important recognitions... In the eyes of the world...
And to us, today's spectators of a constantly evolving city, it seems like we are returning to the glories of the 16th century, when thanks to the genius of a humble stonemason who has now gone down in history, the entire Vicenza patriciate gained prestige and fame...
And Vicenza became unique, a source of inspiration for an unprecedented architectural movement, an example of a new humanistic concept, capable of reinterpreting antiquity in a contemporary key, both in the urban and rural contexts.
The celebrations will start on Thursday 18 April, the day on which "World Heritage Day" occurs, in the Sala degli Stucchi in Palazzo Trissino, with the public presentation of the 2024-2030 Management Plan. They will then continue in the following days with many cultural initiatives, educational workshops and extraordinary openings of sites and buildings, culminating on April 20th, in which actors along the streets will narrate the city and the works of Palladio...
And Vicenza will thus return to being a "widespread theater", a place of exchange of human and artistic values, whose dictates are elegance, balance, symmetry...
A territory to be protected, as UNESCO proposes, but also and above all to be promoted, to encourage exchange, sharing of wonder and intent.
In this sense it seems necessary to mention the figure of Vladimiro Riva, who as a modern patron did so much to ensure that Vicenza and the Palladian lesson were known and recognized in Italy and in the world.
We owe him the promotion of the Palladian Basilica as a National Monument in 2014, and the dream - carried forward by his collaborators - of making the Olympic Theater one too today.
Among the numerous recognitions that our beautiful city can boast of, we remember Resolution no. 259 of the Congress of the United States of America which in 2010 recognized Andrea Palladio as the "father" of American architecture, as the "Four Books of Architecture" constituted a primary source of the classical design of the nation's most representative buildings, from colonial era to today.
What to say?
Could our city make us more proud than this?
And could Andrea Palladio tell us about time better than this?
Posterity will judge...
To us, in these days, celebration, amazement and joy!
To learn more about the UNESCO Palladian heritage, visit here: