Giovanni Alvise , the emperor's first reference here in Vicenza, was one of my great supporters, from the very beginning. He, obviously in addition to Giangiorgio Trissino and Gerolamo Chiericati , worked in my favor on several occasions in the city council to give me the most important public work in the city, that of the loggias of the basilica . Many years later I was able to repay, having in the meantime continued to work for the Valmarana family , with this building at

Gerolamo Chiericati had been one of my first supporters, together with Giangiorgio Trissino and Giovanni Alvise Valmarana , to obtain the first public work in Vicenza, the loggias of the Palazzo della Ragione. I had the opportunity to repay him a few years later, suggesting that he seize an extraordinary opportunity: not one of the many buildings on the main road, which will then take my name: but the scenic backdrop of the landing in Vicenza , obviously from Venice, on the

I was 67 when a terrible plague epidemic broke out in the middle of summer, killing one in three Venetians. After one year, the Senate decides to invoke divine help by voting for a new church . A few years ago I had succeeded Sansovino in the position of Proto della Serenissima, or chief architect of the Republic : I was designing inspired, relentlessly, an intertwining of floors and volumes of white marble, bricks and marmorino that grew quickly, for the first procession

If the city palace in Contrà Riale for Ludovico and Francesco Trissino has remained on paper, their villa has been started, one can read more about it on the spot than an intention. If it had been built in its entirety ... A grandiose work , a multi-level acropolis culminating in another Rotonda , embraced by the barchesse that in these same years managed to see the light at Villa Badoer . Villa Trissino in Meledo is only one of the many reflections of the historical, cultu

Poetry. It is poetry created by history, which I could never have come up with on my own. Also because the Porto, or Da Porto , wanted a palace, and not two bays, to dominate that Piazza Castello overlooked by a palace of Francesco Thiene, husband of Isabella Da Porto. Yet history broke my vision, making it a fragment, like the trace of an ancient ruin, the representation of an idea in its creative act, an architectural unfinished , a section through the centuries. Da Porto

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

In Roman times, south of the Via Postumia , there was a pagan necropolis where even the first Christians buried their dead. In this area grew the cult of the brothers Felice and Fortunato de Rainoni, martyred in Aquileia  during the reign of Domitian . Toward the end of the 4th century, a simple ecclesiae  hall was built, measuring roughly 10 × 16 meters: structurally modest, yet enriched by a mosaic floor  that is still visible inside the basilica. In 452, the hordes of Atti

Vicenza was once a far more beautiful city . The railway station had been a monumental building  before it was bombed. From the station avenue, one walked toward the city center admiring the “O”  and the Campo Marzio , enriched by the Teatro Verdi  and the Moresco Bar .One can only imagine what Vicenza would look like today if its theater had been rebuilt as it was, and if cafés and restaurants still animated the station boulevard. The Giardini Salvi  came to life every Sept

In the immediate post-war years, Piazza delle Erbe  – Piazza delle Erbe (Vicenza)  – was truly, and daily, a destination for countless customers, especially from the historic center. They came to buy vegetables, fruit, eggs, “osei da pelar o xa spelà”  (little birds to pluck, or already plucked), and, on feast days and for the wealthiest, hens whose necks were twisted on the spot . The street vendors each had their fixed place, while the occasional sellers were assigned thei