VENETO

We boarded our private bus early in the morning to get a jump start on the long list of Palladian villas we were going to be seeing along the way to Vicenza. Palladio built his most famous Villas in the area know as Veneto, just outside of Venice in the countryside. Our first stop was at La Malcontenta (Villa Foscari)- an impressive villa located on what would have been a working farm, but now is just a tourist attraction for architects. The scale was incredible as can be seen in the pictures and the size of the people standing next to the building.









Next stop: Borgoricco Town Hall designed by Aldo Rossi. Our professor was a close friend of Rossi’s and was the first to translate his famous book, Architecture of the City into English. She claims to still have a key to his apartment… creepy!

Our time spent at Villa Emo was very strange! There were crews working behind the villa and the two cranes which frame the façade- were unexpected. Many of the buildings we have been studying during our trips have been under restoration of some kind, but the cranes were strange. We were able to take a tour of the villa, and I was able to sneak a picture of the backside- it was like catching Palladio with his skirt up- something no one was supposed to see because the Villa was meant to be approached from the front, not the back. The Villa was originally constructed completely out of stone and brick with a layer of plaster on the outside. When we knocked on the huge front columns and found out that they were steel- we were astonished. Curious of when the columns were replaced I asked our professor and she denied that they were steel- but we knew better than that- stone doesn’t echo like a steel pipe. I am still searching for a picture of the Villa during restoration- it would be like finding a picture of the Mona Lisa with her front teeth knocked out… a sort of architectural joke.

Another one of my favorite places on this trip was Tomba Brion designed by Carlo Scarpa. The architect designed an extension to the cemetery with a small chapel and an area designated as his final resting place. Carlo Scarpa was eventually buried here, but did not want to be buried like everyone else, so his casket was placed vertically into the ground so he could stand up. We didn’t get to spend quite as much time here as we would have liked, and I would really enjoy coming back sometime in the future.

Carlos Scarpa's grave stone.

Day light was beginning to run out and we still had another stop before we ended in Vicenza. At Villa Barbaro we were allowed to go inside, but we had to wear these funny slippers over our shoes so we would not damage the marble floors. We slipped and slid around the villa before we hoped back on the bus and headed for our hostel.













The bus driver dropped us off in front of our hostel- I thought our living conditions were cramped before, but I was wrong. Three of us were jammed into a small room that stunk like garbage and had nasty little bugs crawling around. You get what you pay for…