Domain: Boundary in the Architectural World: Walking on Water: Venice, Verona, Vicenza

This past weekend we had yet another Reading Cities class trip, this time a three day adventure through the towns of Verona, Vicenza, and Venice. Both Verona and Vicenza were visited on Friday, while the remainder of the weekend was left for Venice.

Verona
The town of Verona was not so different from many other Italian towns, even Florence. While there, we toured the Castelvecchio Museum designed by Carlo Scarpa, which is situated along the river. Although I am not generally a huge fan of Scarpa's work, the interior of this museum had a great deal of fantastic architectural elements and was extremely well designed, even in the way that you were expected to move around within the museum. Following the visit to the museum we then were able to walk around the town a bit, visit some of the shops in one of the piazzas, grab a bite for lunch, and visit the location of Juliet's balcony from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Entrance to Castelvecchio Museum from the Street
Yes, that is a drawbridge over what once was a moat.

Drawbridge to Castelvecchio

Interior Courtyard of Castelvecchio

Scarpa Renovation Facade Detail and Material

Fountain In Castelvecchio Courtyard
Scarpa Renovation Piece

Interior of Castelvecchio Museum
I liked the series of arches in perspective here.

Window Detail Inside Castelvecchio Museum
Interesting architectural detailing here.

Artwork Within Castelvecchio Museum

Interior of Castelvecchio Museum
View Down to Original Foundations

Door of Castelvecchio Museum
Scarpa Detailing

Italy's Liberty Bell
okay, not really, but i did not know its purpose

Courtyard of Castelvecchio Museum

Castelvecchio Museum
Nice Architectural Detailing by Scarpa

Castelvecchio Museum
i'll admit it, i just thought this would make for a cool picture

Castelvecchio Museum

Old Sketchbook Inside Castelvecchio Museum

Body Armour in Castelvecchio Museum
yea, this was as cool as it looks

Swords in Castelvecchio Museum

Stairs in Castelvecchio Museum

View of Verona from Castelvecchio Museum

Walkway Across the Courtyard at Castelvecchio Museum

Stairs in Castelvecchio Museum

Stairs in Castelvecchio Museum
These were awesome, Scarpa was a genius with these.

View to Verona from Castelvecchio Museum

Portion of Courtyard in Castelvecchio

Castelvecchio Museum Facade

Castelvecchio Museum

Architectural Detailing

Supports for Platform

Bridge from Castelvecchio

Stone

Stairway Intersection

View Out to Drawbridge from Interior Courtyard

Verona

Juliet's Balcony

Verona

Just a Cool Picture from Verona

Vicenza
Unfortunately I feel as though I can not give a proper reflection or analysis on the town of Vicenza. We were there for merely one hour and only visited one building there which was the final work of Palladio, the Teatro Olimpico. While this building, which is the olderst surviving enclosed theatre in the world was extraordinary, I was not very impressed by the small amount of Vicenza that we did manage to see, but again, we were only there for a very short amount of time.

Since we only visited one building there is no real need to caption these photos.

Venice
After visiting the two previously mentioned towns, I have to say I was beginning to think this trip was not going to be any different than the previous trips in that we were visiting standard Italian towns. And while Italian towns are all wonderful in their own right, they are mostly so similar that they tend to become monotonous. But then along came the town of Venice and boy did it sweep me off my feet. I fell in love with Venice and for the first time during any of our trips this semester I was left at the end feeling as though I had seen everything I needed to see to make the trip worthwhile and still wanted no part of leaving at all. I was requesting that our school be moved to Venice, trying to find reasons that we couldn't leave yet, and looking for escape routes from the train ride back to Florence. Venice is unlike any other place you can visit in the world, at least to my knowledge. There are not streets, or cars, or mopeds, or bicycles. There are boats, canals, bridges, and water. Everywhere. Being a boater my whole life I suppose I am biased in this regard, but I don't think it gets much better than that.
While in Venice we visited the Querini Stampalia Foundation - with an interior and garden designed by Carlo Scarpa, Piazza San Marco and San Marco Basilica, Doge's Palace - a bulding in the Venetian gothic stlye, Procuratie - three connected historic buiildings over arcades in St. Mark's Square, the Olivetti Showroom - a typewriter store designed by Carlo Scarpa, the Redentore Church - designed by Andrea Palladio, the Junghans Area - a particularly more modern district of the city, and Punta Della Dogana - a modern art museum designed by Tadao Ando. All of these were great experiences as well. When not visiting these sites, we spent most of our time getting lost while visiting shops all around the city, tasting the typical Venetian cuisine, and sitting along the water just enjoying our time in Venice.

Here captions will be on a case by case basis, many of these photos are just beautiful pictures of the canals.