Vicenza Discovery Guide

Vicenza is where Andrea Palladio worked out what a building could be, and the city is still largely made of the answer. Between the 1540s and his death in 1580 he rebuilt its centre in a classical idiom that four centuries of architects then copied -- in England, in Russia, and on the plantations and public buildings of the United States. The word Palladian exists because of this one small city in the Veneto.

It also holds the Teatro Olimpico, the oldest surviving indoor theatre in the world, with a trompe-l'oeil stage set built in 1585 that has never been taken down.

What Vicenza does not have is crowds. It sits on the same rail line as Venice and Verona, both of which take the traffic, and the result is a UNESCO World Heritage city where you can stand alone in front of a Palladio facade on a weekday morning.

If you travel slowly: two nights lets you give one day to the city and one to the villas, which is the right split -- La Rotonda and Villa Valmarana sit along a hillside walk south of the centre and deserve an unhurried afternoon rather than a dash between opening times.

If you want the essentials: Corso Andrea Palladio runs the length of the historic centre and is lined with his palaces; the Teatro Olimpico is at one end, Piazza dei Signori and the Basilica Palladiana at the midpoint. That is a full day on foot without leaving the centre.

If you're after local character: Vicenza is one of the world's goldsmithing capitals, a trade practised here since the middle ages and still supporting hundreds of workshops. The jewellers on the Corso and the streets around it are working businesses, not tourist shops.

If you want to go past the obvious: climb to the Santuario di Monte Berico along the portico -- more than 150 arches rising up the hill, a pilgrimage route since the eighteenth century -- for a Veronese in the refectory and the whole Veneto plain laid out below.

Vicenza's problem is the opposite of Venice's: not too many visitors, but too few. Most people pass through on the train between Verona and Venice without getting off, and the city's tourism economy is correspondingly thin. Staying a night here is the single most useful thing a visitor can do.

The Teatro Olimpico is the one place where numbers genuinely matter. It is a 16th-century timber-and-plaster interior, and the wooden stage set behind the proscenium is original 1585 fabric that has survived precisely because it has been protected from wear. Visitor routes are controlled and the set itself is not entered.

The Palladian villas outside the city -- La Rotonda and Villa Valmarana ai Nani among them -- are privately owned houses whose owners open them on limited schedules. Their opening days are genuinely restrictive rather than commercially coy, and turning up outside them achieves nothing.

The Card Musei covering the civic museums funds a group of buildings that could not sustain themselves on individual admissions, and costs little more than two separate tickets.

April to June and September to October are the best windows: mild, and the Berici hills are at their most walkable. The villas' opening seasons are also at their widest then -- several close or reduce sharply outside the warmer months, which is the single biggest planning constraint in Vicenza.

Summer (July-August) is hot and humid in the Po Valley manner, and the city empties in August as residents leave. Some restaurants close for weeks.

Winter (November-February) is cold and foggy. The Teatro Olimpico and the museums stay open and are at their emptiest, but the villas are largely shut and the hills are grey.

Two fixed points worth knowing: Vicenzaoro, the international gold and jewellery fair, fills the city's hotels in January and September -- book well ahead or avoid those weeks entirely.

What a visitor actually pays in Vicenza

Vicenza is materially cheaper than either Verona or Venice, and hotel prices are set by the trade-fair calendar rather than by tourism -- which is why a January room can cost more than an August one.