Andrea Palladio in Vicenza

Andrea Palladio, one of the most influential architects in world history, was born in 1508 and died in 1580. All the buildings that he designed are located in what was then the Republic of Venice and is today the Veneto region of Italy. His most famous churches – the San Giorgio Maggiore and Il Redentore – can be found in Venice. His villas are dotted over the Veneto countryside. The city of Vicenza houses his most famous city palaces and public buildings, such as the Basilica Palladiana and the Teatro Olimpico. In contrast to the relatively small geographical area where his works are located, his teachings reached a wide international following in the following centuries, largely thanks to his Quattro libri dell’architettura (Four Books of Architecture). Most of his works are now recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

My portfolio contains photos of the most important buildings designed by Palladio in Vicenza. It also includes his most famous country villa, the Rotonda, which is located on the outskirts of the city. The buildings are presented in chronological order. I took all the photos on November 29, 2016.

You will find the locations of the mentioned buildings on the map below:

1. Palazzo Iseppo da Porto

Contrà Porti 21
Andrea Palladio; planned around 1546, built in 1546-1552

This is one of the two palazzi that Palladio designed for the Porto family, one of the rich and powerful families of Vicenza. It was commissioned by Iseppo da Porto. Palladio developed a close friendship with him, which, given Porto’s high position in the town council, would help him win several important public commissions later on.

Palladio originally planned two distinct residential blocks for the palazzo. In the Quattro libri dell’architettura, the two blocks are interconnected by a majestic courtyard with four enormous composite columns. Eventually, only the block overlooking the street was completed. Its façade is notable for the unusual height of the lowest order, coming from the Vicentine custom of living on the ground floor of a building. Interesting ornamental details include big mascarons above the windows and the statues of Iseppo da Porto and his son Leonida, depicted as ancient Romans, guarding the entrance from the attic.

The palazzo shows young Palladio’s acquaintance with both antique and contemporary architecture. It is a reinterpretation of Bramante’s Palazzo Caprini, which Palladio had seen some years before in Rome. The four-columned atrium shows Palladio’s knowledge of Vitruvian spaces.

The two rooms to the left of the atrium were frescoed by Paolo Veronese and Domenico Brusasorzi. The stuccoes were made by Bartolomeo Ridolfi.

2. Basilica Palladiana

Piazza dei Signori
Andrea Palladio; planned in 1546-1549, built in 1549-1614

This structure stands in the most representative place in Vicenza, on the Piazza dei Signori. Its oldest part is the leaning tower, known as the Torre Bissara. Dating from 1172 (if not earlier), it reached its current height of 82 metres in 1444.

From the mid-15th century also dates the original Palazzo della Ragione. It served as the seat of the city’s government but also housed a number of shops on the ground floor. It was a Gothic structure with a façade made of red and yellow Verona marble. Parts of this structure are still visible.

The upper floor of the Palazzo della Ragione is entirely occupied by a large hall, raised by large archivolts and with no intermediate supports. It is covered with copper plates and resembles an overturned hull. It was inspired by the Palazzo della Ragione in the nearby Padua (1306, 1420), which, at the time, had the largest roof unsupported by columns in Europe.

In 1481-1494, local architect Tommaso Formenton surrounded the Palazzo della Ragione by a double order of columns. Two years later the south-western corner of the new structure collapsed. It was only in the late-1540s that a competition for the rejuvenation of the town hall was organised. Young Andrea Palladio, working under the supervision of Giovanni di Giacomo da Porlezza at the time, won the competition. He subsequently become the architect of the city of Vicenza.

Palladio hid the original Gothic structure by adding an outer shell of a loggia and a portico. These show one of the first examples of what has come to be known as the Palladian window (or the Serlian window, the serliana, or the Venetian window). Palladio’s addition is a repetitive structure in which round arches are flanked by two rectangular openings of different sizes, in order to match the variable size of the internal bay (because of the presence of an older building).

Palladio’s scheme was named after Sebastiano Serlio, who had described it in a treatise on architecture in 1537. It had already been used by Donato Bramante in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome (1505-1510), and by Jacopo Sansovino in the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice (1537-1553). However, the direct referent for Palladio was the church of the Abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone (1539-1544). Its architect was Giulio Romano, who had used the serlianas to absorb the differences in width of the spans of the pre-existing church. In Palladio’s building, the effect becomes especially visible at the corner arcades.

The columns on the ground floor of Palladio’s building are in Tuscan order. The entablature is decorated with a frieze of alternating metopes and triglyphs. The upper-floor loggias are in Ionic order. The parapets are adorned with statues. The material used was white stone from Piovene Rocchette.

Palladio called his work a basilica, after the type of building in ancient Rome where politics and businesses were run.

The Basilica Palladiana was heavily bombed in World War Two. In recent years it has mostly been used for exhibitions (if not to mention the goldsmiths’ shops on the ground floor).

3. Palazzo Chiericati

Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 37/39
Andrea Palladio; planned in 1550, built in 1551-1557, completed in 1680

Palazzo Chiericati is the most spectacular civilian residence designed by Palladio. It was designed for Count Girolamo Chiericati, the commissioner of Palladio’s Basilica and his enthusiastic supporter. In the planning of Palazzo Chiericati the close friendship also meant that Palladio was given relatively free hands in artistic terms.

The palazzo was built on an islet, surrounded by the Retrone and Bacchiglione rivers and called Piazza dell’Isola (the Island Square). It hosted the city’s wood and cattle market. The open space provided by this location was very unique among the palazzi of Palladio, which usually had a very restricted road perspective. Thus, Palazzo Chiericati can almost be seen as a country villa.

Palladio placed the building on a podium, like an ancient temple, to underline its importance but also to protect it from frequent flooding. Finding inspiration from the architecture of the Roman Forum, he made the façade half-open, a suitable choice for the open space in front of it. He used two overlapping orders, a solution which had already been used by Baldassare Peruzzi in Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne in Rome (1532-1536), and by Andrea Moroni in the Old Courtyard of the Palazzo del Bo in Padua (1552), but which, in terms of expressiveness and elegance, can only be seen as properly born here.

The façade is composed of three bays, with the central bay projecting slightly. On the level of the piano nobile, the central bay is closed, while the bays on the sides have a loggia. Here appears for the first time the closure of the side of a loggia with a wall in which an arch is opened. This solution was borrowed from the Porticus Octaviae in Rome and became a common feature in the villa architecture.

The sculptures on the roof are additions unrelated to Palladio’s project.

In 1557, when Girolamo Chiericati died, only four bays out of eleven were built. For more than a century the palazzo looked like the unfinished Palazzo Porto in Piazza Castello now. The building was completed in 1680.

Today the palazzo houses the art gallery of the city, with a collection ranging from the 13th to the 19th century, including works by artists such as Veronese, Tintoretto, and Tiepolo.

4. Loggia Valmarana

Giardini Salvi
Uncertain attribution to Andrea Palladio; planned and built after 1556

The Loggia Valmarana was constructed outside the city walls of Vicenza in a garden that belonged to the Valmarana family (today known as the Salvi Gardens). It was intended as a meeting point for academics and intellectuals. It is adorned with six Tuscan columns supporting a tympanum. It is a pleasant piece of work by an artist that respected Palladio’s teachings, if not even by Palladio himself (even though strong reservations have been made against the latter hypothesis).

5. Vicenza Cathedral: the dome and the north portal

Piazzetta Duomo
The dome – planned in 1558 and built in 1558-1559 and 1564-1566; the north portal – planned in 1564 and built in 1564-1565

The Cathedral of Vicenza stands on a site formerly occupied by a Roman house and a domus ecclesia, and then by a Paleochristian church, a Romanesque church, and a Gothic church. The bell tower is from the 12th century, the main body of the church dates from the 1430s, and the polychrome-marble façade is from the 1460s.

In the 1550s, canon Paolo Almerico invited Palladio to design the dome of the cathedral and a portal on the north side on the site of a chapel dedicated to St. John the Evangelist. (Some years later that canon turned to Palladio again, with a request to build his country house outside Vicenza. That building came to be known as Villa La Rotonda and is Palladio’s most influential work.)

The dome of the cathedral is similar to some ancient temples with a central plan that Palladio had studied. The lantern of the dome is very simple, without decorations, almost abstract, a feature that Palladio would use again on the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice in 1565.

The north portal of the cathedral is formed by two Corinthian pilasters and a high entablature adorned with a mascaron and festoons. It is similar to the side portals of the Venetian Church of San Pietro di Castello, the façade of which was designed by Palladio around the same time.

In addition to the dome and the north portal, the monument of Girolamo Bencucci, Bishop of Vaison, located in the cathedral, is attributed to Palladio (with Girolamo Pittoni, 1537).

The Cathedral suffered from heavy bombing during World War Two. Only the façade survived. The rest, including Palladio’s additions, has been reconstructed.

6. Casa Cogollo

Corso Andrea Palladio 165/167
Attributed to Andrea Palladio; planned in 1559, built in 1559-1562

This small palazzo stands in contrast with the more monumental palazzi that Palladio designed in Vicenza. Known as the House of Palladio, it has actually no connection with the residence of the architect. In fact, its owner was notary Pietro Cogollo, who had been forced by the town council to remodel the façade of his Quattrocento palazzo as a contribution to the ‘decorum of the town’ – a condition of their positive response to his request for Vicentine citizenship.

There is no documentary evidence to suggest that Palladio designed the palazzo, but the intelligence seen in the plan and the design of the details make it difficult to refer to any other architect. Another proof can be found at the entrance, which consists of an arch flanked by two rectangular spaces, forming a Serlian window, a trademark of Palladio since the Basilica Palladiana.

The architect had to take into account the constraints posed by a narrow space and the impossibility of opening windows at the centre of the piano nobile (because of an existing fireplace and its flue). So the space between the windows is filled with a now barely visible fresco by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo.

7. Loggia del Capitaniato / Palazzo del Capitaniato / Loggia Bernarda

Piazza dei Signori 1
Andrea Palladio; planned in 1565, built in 1571-1572

This building was the seat of the military representative of the Republic of Venice in Vicenza. It was also called Loggia Bernarda after Giovanni Battista Bernardo, the Venetian captain who commissioned it. It is located on the Piazza dei Signori opposite the Basilica Palladiana, which Palladio designed almost twenty years before and the construction of which was still in progress in the 1560s. Eventually, only three bays of the loggia were built instead of the five or seven initially planned.

The pompous Loggia stands in contrast with the plain Basilica. Its main façade consists of three large arches and a giant order of four semi-columns topped by big composite capitals. The side façade overlooking the narrow Contrà del Monte has four lower semi-columns. Because of the conspicuous change in rhythm between the main and the side façade, with results that do not fall within the classical code, the building can be considered as Mannerist.

The façade displays an exuberant decoration of stucco and Istrian marble, obviously conceived for much bigger dimensions. On the main façade some figures pouring water can be found. The trabeation features the inscription: ‘Jo Baptistae Bernardo Praefecto‘, to commemorate the commissioner of the building. The side façade, the design of which is based on that of Roman triumphal arches, features the allegorical statues of the goddesses of victory and peace, to commemorate the victory of Venice and Spain over the Ottoman Empire in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. On the bases of the statues the following Latin phrases can be found: ‘Palmam genuere carinae‘ (‘The ships determined the victory’) and ‘Belli secura quiesco‘ (‘Rest safe from the war’). Above the arch there are four other statues, representing the values that guaranteed the victory and peace: Virtue, Faith, Piety, and Honour.

On both façades the bricks of the shafts of the columns are exposed, creating an interesting chromatic contrast. This, however, is not how Palladio intended it: the columns were originally covered with light plaster, traces of which are only visible at the bases of the capitals.

Today the building is used by the town council of Vicenza.

8. Palazzo Valmarana Braga Rosa

Corso Antonio Fogazzaro 16
Andrea Palladio; planned 1565, built 1566-1580

This palazzo was designed in 1565 for the Valmarana family, one of the most powerful families in Vicenza, who had supported Palladio since the beginning of his career.

The palazzo was innovative in that its entire vertical expanse is embraced by a giant order. Six composite pilasters on a high ashlar base seem to be superimposed on a minor order of Corinthian pilasters, which frame the openings and decorative panels. The higher pilasters are absent at the edges, revealing the underlying order, which supports two bas-reliefs of a soldier bearing the coat of arms of the Valmarana family. Such a superimposition was experimented by Palladio on the façades of several religious buildings, such as the Church of San Francesco della Vigna in Venice (1564), where the nave and the aisles are projected on the same plane, guaranteeing the integrity of the church’s interior and exterior. This, together with the intense light and shade effects, makes the façade stand out on the street in spite of the restricted visual angle.

The palazzo was heavily damaged during World War Two. Its façade, however, remained intact, and today represents a rare example of a façade surviving with its original plaster and marmorino. In 1960, it was sold by the Valmarana family to Vittor Luigi Braga Rosa.

9. Villa Almerico Capra Valmarana / La Rotonda

Via della Rotonda 45
Andrea Palladio; planned in 1566-1567, built in 1657-1605, and completed by Vincenzo Scamozzi

Villa La Rotonda is Palladio’s most famous work and one of the masterpieces of world architecture. It stands outside the city of Vicenza in the countryside stretching from the banks of the Bacchiglione River to the Berici Hills. It was built for canon Paolo Almerico, who, some years before, had asked Palladio to design the dome and the north portal of the Cathedral of Vicenza. The canon left the papal court in 1565, returned to Vicenza, and wanted to settle down in a quiet country house.

The villa is a completely symmetrical building with a square plan and four façades. Each façade has a projecting portico with steps leading up to it. The porticoes consist of six Ionic columns that support the tympanums graced by the statues of classical deities.

Each portico opens via a small cabinet or corridor to the circular central hall, from which the name La Rotonda is derived. Here, Palladio faced the theme of the central plan, which until then had been reserved for religious architecture. Following the model of the Pantheon in Rome, he covered the hall with a dome. It was the first time that the dome was applied to a residential building.

The dome is surrounded by a balcony and access corridors and corner rooms on two levels. All the rooms were proportioned with mathematical precision. In order for each room to have some sun, the design was rotated 45° from the cardinal points of the compass. Among the four principal rooms on the piano nobile are the West Salon, or the Holy Room (because of the religious nature of its frescoes and ceiling), and the East Salon (containing an allegorical biography of Paolo Almerico in fresco). The frescoes were made by Alessandro and Giovanni Battista Maganza and Anselmo Canera. The basement is dedicated to the service rooms.

The Rotonda was also designed to be in perfect harmony with the landscape. Even though it looks perfectly symmetrical, it actually has certain variations (such as in the façades or in the width of steps), designed to allow each façade to complement the surrounding landscape. This was in complete contrast with buildings such as Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola’s Villa Farnese (planned in 1556-1559), which clearly dominates over the landscape in Caprarola near Rome.

Originally, the main entrance was the one towards the river. The current entrance faces the northwest portico. The entrance way is between the service blocks, commissioned by the Capra brothers and built by Scamozzi. When approaching the villa from this side, one might think that one is ascending from below to a temple on a hilltop.

The construction of the villa took almost forty years to complete, and both the architect and his client died before they could see the work done. The property was overtaken by the brothers Odorico and Mario Capra, and Palladio’s work was finalized by Vincenzo Scamozzi, his spiritual heir. Since 1912 the villa belongs to the Valmarana family.

The Villa La Rotonda has been imitated many times over the centuries, particularly in England and the United States. Famous examples include Lord Burlington and William Kent’s Chiswick House in London (1725-1729), Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia (1768-1809), and James Hoban’s White House in Washington, D.C. (1792-1800). The villa has also been famous among writers. Goethe, for example, visited it several times and said that Palladio had succeeded in designing a Greek temple suitable for living. To me it was Hofmannsthal’s beautiful description of the villa at the end of an essay about his trip to Italy that made me want to go Vicenza in the first place.

10. Palazzo Barbaran da Porto

Contrà Porti 11
Andrea Palladio; planned in 1569, built in 1570-1575

This is the only palazzo in Vicenza that Palladio succeeded in executing in entirety. He designed it for the Vicentine nobleman Montano Barbarano. The client purchased another building at an advanced state of the project, and Palladio’s task was to blend the pre-existing structures into a unified edifice.

It was quite a difficult job to do. For example, it was impossible to position the entrance portal with the atrium in the centre of the façade. Palladio had to restore a symmetrical appearance compromised by the oblique course of the perimeter walls of the existing houses. Also, he had to figure out how to support the floor of the great hall of the piano nobile.

Palladio departed from the model of the wings of the Theatre of Marcellus in Rome. He divided the atrium into three aisles, and he placed centrally four Ionic columns, which allowed the reduction of the span of the central cross-vaults, set against lateral barrel vaults. In this way he achieved a framework capable of bearing the hall above it with no difficulty.

The central columns were tied to the perimeter walls by fragments of rectilinear entablature, which absorb the irregularities of the atrium plan. As a result, a Serlian window was born, just like in the loggias of the earlier Basilica. Furthermore, Palladio borrowed from the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum the unusual type of the Ionic capital with angled volutes. This permitted him to mask the rotations necessary for the alignment of the columns and half-columns.

The façade of the palazzo stretches over nine bays, with the Ionic order on the ground floor and the Corinthian order with festoons on the piano nobile. On the inside, there is a courtyard surrounded by a majestic arcade on two orders. The interiors are exquisitely decorated.

Today the palazzo houses the Palladio Museum and the Andrea Palladio International Centre for the Study of Architecture (CISA).

11. Palazzo Porto Breganze

Piazza Castello 18
Andrea Palladio; planned around 1571, built in 1572-1785, completed in 1615 by Vincenzo Scamozzi

This project seems to have been initiated immediately after the publication of Quattro libri dell’architettura in 1570, since its design does not appear in the book. Like most buildings in Vicenza designed by Palladio, it was left incomplete. Only two bays were ever built. These stand next to the Quattrocento house of the Porto family, which was originally destined to be demolished along with the construction of the new building. It is not known why the patron, Alessandro da Porto, did not carry on with the project.

The completed façade reveals a very ambitious design for the palazzo. The giant order of composite half-columns stands on socles higher than a human being. The entablature is high, too, decorated with oak garlands hung from the capitals, and pierced with windows in the manner of Baldassare Peruzzi (to give light to the rooms of the mezzanine). There are windows between the columns. The design is typical of Mannerism because of the strong light and shade effect created by the closeness of the columns and the neat horizontal division.

At the rear of the building evidence of a grand exedra can be found, likely designed to embellish the courtyard.

12. Palazzo Thiene Bonin Longare

Corso Andrea Palladio 13
Planned in around 1572 by Andrea Palladio; built in 1586-1610 by Vincenzo Scamozzi

This huge palazzo at the corner of the Piazza del Castello is one of the two palazzi of the Thiene family that Palladio worked on. Its main façade, overlooking the Corso, is, on the ground floor as well as on the piano nobile, adorned with eight half-columns, which create a neat light and shade effect. The back façade is structured in the same way and has a great double-storey loggia. This makes it similar to the Palazzo Barbaran da Porto, which Palladio had planned just some time before. Palladio died in 1580, before the construction of the palazzo started, and the project passed to his spiritual heir, Vincenzo Scamozzi, whose work is the façade overlooking the piazza and probably the atrium as well. In the 19th century, the palazzo was acquired by Lelio Bonin Longare.

13. Church of Santa Corona: Valmarana Chapel

Contrà Santa Corona 2
Andrea Palladio; planned in 1576, built in 1576-1580

The Santa Corona is a Gothic church built in 1261-1270 to house the crown of thorns that Jesus wore during the Passion. Many side chapels were added to it in the 15th century. In 1481-1489 the church was significantly altered by Lorenzo da Bologna. His works include the construction of a crypt for the interment of the members of the Valmarana family.

The Valmarana Chapel is thought to have been designed by Palladio in 1576, after the death of Antonio Valmarana, one of his patrons. Even though it occupies a very small space, it is a monumental work. To give breadth to the chapel, Palladio built two high apses on the sides. To these he added two large windows and four oculi. The apses are harmonised with the central space from the base strip and the cornice, above which a cross vault rises. The result is a sophisticated quotation of the tablinum of an ancient Roman house.

Palladio was working on the side chapels of the Venetian Church of the Redeemer (Il Redentore) at that time. The arrangement of spaces in them is almost identical to the Valmarana Chapel, making the latter a sort of a prototype.

The church has a very rich artistic heritage, the most famous examples being the Baptism of Christ by Giovanni Bellini (1500-1502), and the Adoration of the Magi by Paolo Veronese (1573).

In 1580, when Palladio died, he was buried in this church. In the mid-19th century, his remains were moved to the Cimitero Maggiore, where the famous people of Vicenza rest.

14. Church of Santa Maria Nova

Contrà Santa Maria Nova
Attributed to Andrea Palladio; planned in 1578, built in 1588-1590

In 1578, Lodovico Trento, a Vicentine nobleman, funded the reconstruction of a church adjacent to the Augustinian Convent of Santa Maria Nova to the west of the city. The church is thought to have been constructed by the master builder Domenico Groppino on the basis of a project of Palladio.

In Vicenza, Palladio had designed the portal of the Church of Santa Maria dei Servi (in 1531), the dome (in 1558) and the north portal (in 1564) of the Cathedral, and the Valmarana Chapel in the Church of Santa Corona (in 1576). The Church of Santa Maria Nova is the only complete church design in Vicenza attributed to Palladio.

The façade of the church is defined by four columns resting on a high plinth and supporting trabeations and a triangular tympanum. The surfaces between the columns are enlivened by shallow niches and blind windows. In the middle of the tympanum there is a circular window, which is now blinded but which originally gave light to the tribune.

The interior is like the cella of an ancient temple. It consists of a single hall, surrounded by a row of Corinthian semi-columns on high bases (cf. the Maison Carrée of Nîmes). The walls have excellent stucco decorations, and the ceiling is coffered.

15. Teatro Olimpico

Piazza Giacomo Matteotti 11
Planned in 1580 by Andrea Palladio, built in 1580-1585 by Vincenzo Scamozzi

The Teatro Olimpico, one of the wonders of Vicenza, was the last design of Palladio. It was commissioned in 1580, when Palladio was 71 years old, by the Accademia Olimpica, a cultural association which he himself had helped to found in 1555. In 1579 the Academy had obtained rights to build a permanent theatre on the site of an old fortress.

The design of the Teatro Olimpico is clearly inspired by Roman theatres as described by Vitruvius. The stage is surrounded by a terraced auditorium, framed by a colonnade and frieze adorned with statues. In order to fit the stage and the seating area into the wide space, it was necessary for Palladio to flatten the semicircular seating area typical of the Roman theatre into an ellipse.

The rectangular stage has a majestic scaenae frons with a central archway (also known as the Porta Reggia), smaller side openings, columns and semi-columns, aedicules with statues, and panels with bas-reliefs. The progressive diminishing of the front with height is visually compensated by the protrusion of the statues. The intense light and shade effect and the increased sense of depth that are thus achieved are typical of Mannerist architecture.

In August 1580, six months after the beginning of the construction of the theatre, Palladio died. Vincenzo Scamozzi, another prominent Vicentine architect, was called to complete the project.

Palladio’s design of the scaenae frons permitted perspective views through its openings but he left no indication about how exactly these should be carried out. Scamozzi undertook the work and designed the now-famous trompe-l’œil scenery. It gives the appearance of seven long streets of an antique city receding to a distant horizon. (That city was Thebes, the setting of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, with which the theatre was opened on March 3, 1585.) The make-believe streets were made of wood and stucco imitating marble, and their lighting with glass oil lamps was carefully designed. These perspectives are extraordinarily realistic, even though in reality they only recede a few metres. At least one perspective view can be seen from every seat in the auditorium.

Because the theatre was virtually abandoned after a few productions, the stage set was left the way it was and is today in relatively good condition. It is the oldest surviving stage set in existence. Scamozzi’s lighting system, too, has survived, having been used only a few times.

Scamozzi also designed the entrance arch of the theatre. Its rusticated look can be explained by the fact that it was inserted into the medieval city wall, located in front of the theatre. Its shape and size, however, are the same as those of the Porta Reggia of the scaenae frons on the stage. The visitors were so guided from the medieval to the classical surroundings.

Some authors have stated that the Teatro Olimpico was the first purpose-built theatre in Europe over a thousand years. In reality, such theatres already existed in several Italian cities before 1580. Today, the Teatro Olimpico is one of only three Renaissance theatres remaining in existence, the other two being Vincenzo Scamozzi’s Teatro all’Antica in Sabbioneta (1588-1590) and Giovanni Battista Aleotti’s Teatro Farnese in Parma (1618). Both these theatres were based, to a large extent, on the Teatro Olimpico.

Today, the Teatro Olimpico is still used for plays and musical performances, but it is not equipped with heating and air conditioning and audience sizes are limited for conservation reasons.