-
Verona and Vicenza
When we got to Verona, we found out our hotel room sat directly above a McDonald’s. Not so convenient when it costs way more in euros than in dollars back home to buy a meal that still makes you feel miserable. Can’t complain though; we didn’t come for the fast food.
Verona is home to Juliet (Shakespeare), a boatload of high-fashion shopping corridors, a Roman amphitheatre, and Carlo Scarpa’s work at Castelvecchio. We only spent one night in the city, so those are the parts that stick out in my mind. It’s pretty spread out, and easy to get around. The view from the top of the Torre dei Lamberti was one of the most memorable lookouts above any city I’ve seen here in Europe. If you’re into museums or Scarpa, Castelvecchio is cool.
It’s name translates to “Old Castle”, so if that doesn’t do it for you, the detail work in the exhibit spaces or the added flavor from the modern intervention might. There’s a nice art collection and a room full of medieval weapons and armor - right up any normal man’s alley. All the pieces of work in the museum have Scarpa’s name written all over the cases and easels holding them. He’s obsessed with finely crafted details, and it shows. There is a layering element to his design process that is very hard to understand, but yields an interesting representation of the building as a total work of art.
We spent the rest of our evening wandering the streets, snooping around shops we couldn’t afford clothes from before heading back for dinner. The next morning we drove to Vicenza, which is what someone in our group called a Palladio “Theme-park”. There were no roller coasters or funnel cakes, but there was a bunch of buildings by one of the most influential architects of the Italian Renaissance. Of those we saw in the rain, the building we spent the longest at was the Olympic Theatre.
Real sweet perspective. Believe it or not, the floor behind the stage rises up towards the ceiling and the roofline slopes down to create the illusion of a long city street. It limited the range of plays the theatre could host, but the ones they could were probably blockbusters.
On the way home, we stopped at the Brion Cemetery to see another of Scarpa’s projects. It’s a large section dedicated to the Brion Family tombs with a small chapel. I couldn’t figure out if I liked it because everything seemed fragmented into overly considered details. It was hard to appreciate the cemetery as that “total work of art” because there was so much going on in concentrated areas. I’m glad I got to see another cemetery though… They’re all the rage over here.
