Corso Andrea Palladio Site Features

What the Corso shows better than any single building is Palladio's method applied at scale and on a budget. These are brick-and-stucco palaces worked to read as stone, with classical orders applied to what are, structurally, ordinary urban houses on narrow plots.

Because the street is narrow, none of the facades can be seen head-on -- they were designed to be read at an angle, foreshortened, by someone walking past. That constraint shaped them, and it is why photographs of them are so often disappointing.

Palazzo Thiene

Heavy rusticated stonework, unusually severe for Palladio, and a reminder that his style was not one thing.

The goldsmiths' windows

Vicenza is one of Europe's great gold-working cities; the jewellers along the Corso are working businesses.

The evening passeggiata

From around six the whole street fills with people walking it end to end -- the Corso in its actual, everyday function.

Two anchors

The Teatro Olimpico at the north-eastern end, Piazza Castello at the south-western, and Piazza dei Signori opening off the middle.

The street runs the full length of Vicenza's historic centre, from Piazza Castello at the south-western end to Piazza Matteotti and the Teatro Olimpico at the north-eastern, following the line of the Roman decumanus. The Bacchiglione runs just beyond its far end, and the Berici hills rise a short way south.