Your Palladian Cicerone will introduce you to Vicenza's Unesco World Heritage Site and its Golden Age through the narration of one of the architect's finest palaces, Palazzo Valmarana Braga. You'll contemplate the most extraordinary facade of a Palladian palace, the precious Renaissance fresco with its cosmology on the ceiling of the Count's study, the ideal reconstruction of what the Empress of Austria saw on her visit to these places, and the story of the spread of Palladianism in what was once the cloth emporium.

Not a Palladian villa, but the place where the architect's life changed. He was working on the building site of Giangiorgio Trissino's villa, that he wanted to transform in the Roman fashion of Raphael and the ancients. Still a stonemason, Palladio was increasingly involved in architecture for the workshop of the Pedemuros, the most renowned construction company in Vicenza, who had contracted the work. Thus occurred, right here, the encounter that marked his destiny, when he recognized in Giangiorgio the mentor he needed, the interpreter of his great project for Vicenza.

The Caldogno family, great silk entrepreneurs as well as friends of Palladio, like most of the aristocratic families of Vicenza in its Golden Age needed a country villa as well as a city palace. A residence in which they could worthily live and above all accommodate. It was Angelo who completed his father Losco's work by having the villa decorated with frescoes. Let life be magnificence, as taught by Lorenzo De Medici, father of Leo X who so loved Giangiorgio Trissino, who in turn instructed Palladio with such benevolence. Only admission to the villa is included. Any guided tours will have to be requested and paid for as extras, subject to reservation and confirmation of availability.

Villa Valmarana Bressan, a Unesco World Heritage Site, was the first occasion when Palladio experimented with what would later be known as the Serliana, the form of the Basilica and the solution of many of his other projects. It was in his eyes something similar to a design by Raphael for the facade of S. Lorenzo, with a touch of the Palazzo Tè in Mantua, but the architect sought a cleaner, lighter form, to then surprise visitors with the grandeur of the Roman bath structures inside. Delightful fruit of his early experiments, in which the beginning of a legendary story can still be read very clearly. Any guided tours will have to be requested and paid for as extras, subject to reservation and confirmation of availability. After the tour, it's time to refresh yourself with the Palladian Gourmet Picnic in the setting of the Villa's garden, imagining it repopulated by its own noble inhabitants engaged in a similar, delicious pleasure, generation after generation.

Like Palazzo Thiene, the Villa for Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene was also designed by the great Giulio Romano, the family architect, who was on very close terms with the Gonzaga family of Mantua. Early in Palladio's career as an architect he was here, in fact, director of works, knowing how to show the masons how to dispense with stone as much as possible, in favor of terracotta. He was himself a construction man. But soon Francis died, at the French court, and Marcantonio's son Ottavio moved the family investments to Scandiano. The building site was interrupted, to be resumed much later in another direction....

Not many know how important the noble Antenore Pagello was, alongside the more famous Giangiorgio Trissino, for Palladio's education and fortune. They shared the intention of turning Vicenza into a new cultural capital, completely transforming it in its forms. It was his property and he, now in ruins, sold it to Taddeo Gazzotti, the salt duty contractor. These were truly the beginnings of Palladio, and it was a way for him to enter into a new contact with Venice a few years later.

For almost everyone, the greatest Palladian masterpiece. Thanks to the freedom that Paul Almericus granted him, the Architect could indeed create a pure work in which the magnificence of man's intellect could shine. It was the perfect location, the perfect patron, the perfect context, it was the perfect moment in Palladio's history as a man and as an artist: a house temple of the sacred discussion of enlightened men about philosophy, theology, politics, our ancient cultural heritage and our highest projects. Only admission to the villa is included. Any guided tours will have to be requested and paid for as extras, subject to reservation and confirmation of availability.

The tour will end with an aperitivo that can be enjoyed in the villa or upon return to Palazzo Valmarana Braga, where an additional Palladian surprise will await our welcome guests.