Discover Palazzo Chiericati

Almost every Renaissance town palace presents a flat wall to the street with a door in it. Chiericati does the opposite: a Doric colonnade at ground level and an Ionic one above, both open, running the width of the facade.

Palladio could do this only because the site faced an open market square rather than a narrow street, and because Chiericati had secured the ground in front. The loggia is set back behind the property line, so the colonnade stands over what is technically public space.

The upper loggia is broken by a solid central block, which stops the facade reading as a pure screen and gives it a centre. The result belongs somewhere between a palace and a villa, and Palladio never repeated it.

Materials are the usual Vicentine economy: brick and stucco worked to read as stone, with the columns in real stone where it counts.