We are in donwtown Vicenza, in a perpendicular street to Corso Palladio, a street like many others in the heart of the city. Here is one of the wonderful buildings that creates the cultural, artistic and architectural map of the city: Palazzo Barbarano, project by Andrea Palladio, the only construction that the architect managed to see finished, where which he could control the full execution including the decorative elements.
This is no mausoleum for a dead hero. It is a place in which thinking about architecture is fostered, far from the more cynical commercial logic of the profession, which consumes rather than produces knowledge. (Cit. From www.palladiomuseum.org)
We chose to organize here, in this building, which Grassi Pietre sponsors, a guided tour in the various museum rooms with some clients and collegues, an evening that was an occasion for meeting, discussion, conviviality, but above all an invitation to get involved in the magnificence of the works of the great Italian architect. His original drawings and sketches, in addition to those of other famous architects on display in the building, involved our guests with their perspective effects, the perfection of lines, proportions, lights and shadows.
In particular, we focused on the stone room, where various blocks of stones are exhibited, including our Vicenza Stone: here the technologies used by Palladio to build with and without stone, from the extraction of the blocks in the quarries are told to their processing.
The evening ended with the buffet in the Sala del Libro, where “a parallel story – the incredible publishing success of Palladio's Four Books – and the signature building of Palladian architecture, the Villa La Rotonda, which has been copied on three continents." (quoted from www.palladiomuseum.org).
