Basilica Palladiana

The Basilica Palladiana is the building that made Andrea Palladio's name. It is not a church: it is Vicenza's medieval town hall, which by 1500 was structurally failing, wrapped from 1549 in a two-storey white marble loggia that solved the engineering problem and produced one of the defining facades of the Renaissance.

This is a rebuilt building, not a surviving one -- the roof and much of the interior date from after 1945 -- and the ticket income from the upper floor pays for maintaining that reconstruction.

The ground loggia is a public passage that Vicentines use daily, and the terrace fills with people in the evening; treating it as a thoroughfare rather than a monument is closer to what it has always been.

The ground-level loggia and the terrace are free and open. The upper loggia and the great hall are ticketed, with the hall's opening tied to whichever exhibition is running -- worth checking before a trip planned around it, since between shows the interior can be closed.

It stands mid-way along Corso Andrea Palladio, ten minutes' walk from the railway station. The civic Card Musei covers it alongside the Teatro Olimpico and Palazzo Chiericati.