We are above an ancient sea, when here - tens of millions of years ago - we were in the tropics of the planet. In the meantime the earth's axis has shifted, many different layers have overlapped and pressed together, until they became rock... But even today we can find the algae and corals of that coral reef that separated the open sea from a large internal plain.
A reef rich in marine life that survives in the stone used by Palladio for the bases and capitals of the columns of his Villas. In the frames of the doors and windows. In the elegant stairways. In the sculptures crowning the roofs and entrances.
Where there were ammonites and other molluscs, sea urchins, single or colonial corals, today we have a riot of skeletons of microflora and microfauna trapped between the clear sands of those ancient seabeds that we could ideally compare to those of the Caribbean.
That world re-emerges, then is submerged by the sea, re-emerges again, sinks again, helpless in the face of the cyclopean forces that shape our planet, on a scale of power gigantic compared to that of man.
That pale and warm color, so characteristic of our Vicenza stone, still today gives back the light of those beaches and those seabeds under the reflections of crystalline waves, and is one of the many elements that contribute to the beauty of these architectures designed to blend with the surrounding nature. And to become the pulsating stars of the territories that here found and find their reference, once also functional, today almost always only landscape.
There is no single color of Vicenza stone: the shades of the different veins range from ivory white, to cream, to straw yellow, to light golden yellow, in flowery dunes that move between the different valleys. Andrea knows them well, and uses them to modulate the effects of his creations: from monochrome to more or less contrasting two-tones, making the different parts of his architectural organisms almost dialogue.
And then that stone, so soft and easy to work that it can even be treated with wooden tools, with Palladio becomes dust to be integrated into the composition of the plaster. So that the entire Villa, finally, will be to admiring eyes a pure sculpture of a single material: that, precisely, of that ancient coral reef that began to form tens of millions of years ago (some say 50, some say 90) and that still today is shown to our eyes and those of our visitors in what we call the “Lumignano Cliff” and in the southeastern part of the hills.
Our stonemason knew that stone very well. Since he was a boy he had grown up with it, because going down the stairs he found Cavazza's workshop, in Padua, where he would begin his apprenticeship. And it will be that sweet stone that will take shape under his hands, for all the years in which his skill, his knowledge, his passion will grow, in particular soon moved to Vicenza, to the Pedemuro workshop.
Until, on the threshold of thirty, he will be able to begin his real education as an architect.
But Palladio is not a Leon Battista Alberti: with that stone of the Tropic of Cancer he grows physically, knows every secret, savors its ancestral essence, fascinated by that light imprisoned in matter, beyond the confines of the ages of man, forever.
Finally arriving to eternalize it himself, in what today have become our Coral Reef Villas.
A suggestive E-Bike itinerary at the foot of the eastern Beric Hills is the Palladian E-Bike Experience that invites you to discover these Palladian landscapes, with the guiding voice of the spirit of Andrea Palladio.
Find out more here!
https://www.ebike.palladianroutes.com/product-page/vicenza-its-landscapes-and-the-spirit-of-palladio
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