The Valmarana family, that of Giovanni Alvise and his much praised wife, and later widow, Isabella Nogarole. The Valmarana family of Palazzo Valmarana (now Braga Rosa), where we are based, the business network of the Palladians, the owners of the Palladio Villas, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. That of Leonardo, prince of the Olympic Academy at the Olympic Theatre.
Well, that Valmarana family lives here, still, in these walls, here among the environments in which we work, here in the apartments above our heads.
Every now and then someone looks out, if you look carefully passing here through the ancient Pozzo Rosso, from the windows on the main floor, imperceptibly half-opening one of the tall shutters.
We find him riding among the Palladio Villas around the city, arriving there where he took over the construction site of the Villa in Lisiera upon the death of his uncle.
It hovers in the crypt of S. Corona, where upon the death of his brother Leonardo asked his architect to build a chapel, in which his parents would also rest.
We hear him breathing among the ancient Valmarana gardens (today Salvi), between a Farnese Hercules and a bust of Giangiorgio Trissino, in front of a loggia which is reflected on the Seriola: they are two images reflected and opposed, but in harmony with each other, those of the dream and reality, those of vision and history.
The first flickers, immaterial, upside down: the second looks at us, from a past that we aspire to, at that moment, set in motion.
Finding it again there, behind us, in the centre, when we sit together with other strangers, all equal on these simple wooden steps, almost together with the actors that we can imagine on the stage in front of us, while they experience Oedipus Rex, that night four hundred and a few years ago: at the Teatro Olimpico obviously.
Leonardo, who merged for an eternal moment with Charles V, observes us from above, prince of a city proud of its ambition, its ingenuity and its virtue.
Proud to have been, or rather to have just begun to be, the city of Palladio.
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