Vicenza

Vicenza, capital of an Italian province at the confluence of the rivers Bacchiglione and Retrone, 42 miles W. of Venice by rail. It is surrounded by a moat, and walls half in ruins, and contains many palaces and churches. The Piazza dei Signori, a remarkably fine square, contains a lofty and slender campanile, 270 feet high. Palladio was a native; and Vicenza owes to him many of its finest buildings, as the Palazzo della Ragione, the Olympic Theatre, and the prefect's palace, a rich and fanciful edifice. The Duomo, built in the 13th century, is Gothic; the nave of it is 60 feet wide; and in the chapels are interesting pictures. Manufactures of silk, linen, earthenware, paper, and velvet are carried on. The surrounding country, studded with mansion-houses, and rich in vineyards, is exceedingly beautiful. Pop. 27,694. Vicenza (anc. Vicentia, or Vicetia) continued to be a municipal town of some consideration till it was laid waste by Attila, 452 A.D. It revived again under the Lombards, and became for a time, in the middle ages, an independent republic.—The province, which runs up to the Alpine ridges dividing Italy from the Austrian Trentino in Tyrol, contains on the north the Sette Comuni, seven village communes, which, formerly German, for a time formed a kind of republic under Venetian protection. In two of these villages German is still the principal language.