Vicenza - A One Street Wonder

Really, I don't have a lot to share here. Vicenza is the site where famous architect Andrea Palladio made his big break in the art world and ended up designing a slew of buildings in this small town. The main drag is named after him and pr't near every building was designed by him. And coming off an exhausting stay in Verona - I was mostly pooped.

The highlight of the city was his last project (and he actually died before it was finished), the Olympic Theatre. It was quite the hulla-ba-loo in its time. It seats about 800 people, but on opening night, over 2,000 people showed up (and waited over 8 hours for the show to begin). The theatre was to act as not only a place for great tragedies and comedies to be performed, but a sort of hall for the scholars as well.

Anyway, all this to say, it was such a big deal they actually voted on what the first performance would be and it was deemed that Oedipus Rex was the perfect choice. As such, an extremely complex set was built for the theatre that included several different optical illusions. The stage represents the entire town of Thebes and appears to be not only life-sized, but also continuous (as in, you can't quite make out where the streets end). I'm not doing a very good job explaining, but I shot a little video - hopefully that will give you a better idea.

Other than the Olympic Theatre, most of the other sights were nothing to write home about (heh). I did enjoy some particularly good gelato (I added the flavor to the sidebar already) and the hostel was significantly better than the one in Verona. After one night though, I was ready to move on. (My feet were killing me - so much touring in a row!)

So I hopped back on the train for the 16 minute ride to the city of Padua (Padova, in italiano) and will be enjoying two whole days here before I finally make it to Venice. Woo hoo!

*Video wouldn't load - will have to try again later!!