Padova, Vicenza and Verona

The last two days of our travels were spent in Padova, Vicenza, and Verona.  In Padova we saw the current Renzo Piano Building Workshop ‘Piece by Piece’ Exposition, which was really interesting and inspiring.  In the afternoon we went to Vicenza to check into our last hotel and go see Villa Rotonda.  This was like being inside of every architecture textbook ever.  It was even more impressive in person than I would have imagined.  The next morning we went to Verona to visit Castlevecchio.  This castle was redesigned by Carlo Scarpa to host a museum.  The spaces of this museum and the attention to detail were really cool.  Scarpa even designed the displays for the artwork.  Afterwards we went back to Vicenza to meet again with Wilma and see some more Palladian works.  We went to Theatro Olympica, which was amazing!  I’ve never heard of this building before, which is surprising being involved with theatre in high school.  The wooden rows of seating were the original ones of the original 15th century building.  There were seven perspective scenes behind the stage opening that were used as scenery.  As Wilma told us, the interior of the theatre was dismantled and moved to a private villa during the war and afterwards reconstructed, and that is why everything is still original.

This was another really amazing trip, but I’m so glad to be back in the Villa for the last three weeks of classes.

Via Venezia

After around 5 hours of travel, by both bus and train, we arrived in Venice, only to get right onto another bus to go tour a few Palladian Villas.  We saw Villa Malcontenta and Villa Emo with our guide and Palladio expert, Wilma.  She is so knowledgable about Palladio and his works it’s amazing.  She loved to say that everything he did is “perfect”.  My favorite part of the day was visiting Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Cemetery in Treviso.  It was absolutely amazing!  I’ve never wanted to spend so much time in such a creepy place.  After all of this traveling we arrived in Venice very late Wednesday evening.  Thursday we spent most of the day in and around San Marco Square.  We toured the church and the Doge’s Palace.  Afterwards we took a lunch break and a group of us went to find this store that sells handmade sketchbooks.  This woman hand-makes every sketchbook in the store and she is the sweetest thing!  She gave us all discounts! Later in the day we visited the Olivetti Museum, Rialto Bridge and a museum designed by Carlo Scarpa.  We also got to take a mini gondola ride/taxi across the canal!  The next day we visited a few Palladian churches as well as the Punta Della Dogana Museum by Tado Ando and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.  Both I had been to before, but the Ando museum had a different exhibit going on, which was much better than the one on my previous trip.