1508-2008
500th Anniversary
Andrea Palladio is acknowledged today as the most important architect the western world has ever had. Over the last years, the decline of the modernist movement in architecture has aroused a renewed interest for the classical style and for Palladio's works.
Spread all over the Vicenza and the Veneto area are dozens of magnificent villas and sumptuous buildings as the everlasting heritage of his architectural genius.
Visiting the Vicenza area is like coming to know Palladio, the only architect that gave his name to a style that had influence even on the other side of the ocean. The Vicenza area has been his cradle and only here you can meet and appreciate his genius. As Guido Piovene wrote in his "Viaggio in Italia", "... learning about Palladio, the Basilica, the Loggia del Capitanio and the other monuments trough the study is an imperfect knowledge. You have to see it in Vicenza".
Palladio ItalyPalladio's biography would be worth a novel or a costume film: his humble Paduan descent, the difficult beginnings in the sculpture laboratories, the encounter with the patron who introduced him to classical culture...
It is not, of course, a cloak-and-dagger-story, but the tale of an extraordinary artistic career with the background of Renaissance Italy. Every villa and every palazzo, as well as the great Venetian churches, have their own history and a key person that testifies a moment of the architect's personal history.
[For more info visit www.visitpalladio.com/en]