Palazzo Chiericati Site Features

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.

The double loggia

Best seen from across Piazza Matteotti, where the full width and the depth of the shadow behind the columns register together.

The Museo Civico collection

Veronese, Tintoretto, Bassano, Tiepolo and Van Dyck, in a building that is itself the most significant object in it.

The Salone

The frescoed hall on the piano nobile, decorated by Domenico Brusasorzi and Battista Zelotti in the 1550s.

Next door to the theatre

The Teatro Olimpico is directly across the square, and one ticket covers both.

The palace stands on Piazza Matteotti at the north-eastern end of Corso Andrea Palladio, at the edge of the historic centre where the Bacchiglione runs past. The open square in front is essential to it -- this is a building that needs to be seen from a distance, and almost uniquely among Palladio's palaces, can be.