Palladian palace · 1565 · Vicenza

Valmarana Braga Palace

Palazzo Valmarana Braga is a Renaissance palace in Vicenza designed by Andrea Palladio in 1565 for the noblewoman Isabella Nogarola Valmarana. Located on Corso Fogazzaro, it is one of the 23 Palladian monuments included in the UNESCO World Heritage Site “City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto,” inscribed in 1994. The palace is celebrated for the colossal pilasters that dominate its facade — a bold compositional experiment that influenced Baroque architecture across Europe.

At a glance

Type: Urban Renaissance palace
Period: Designed 1565; construction began shortly after
Style: Palladian Renaissance
Location: Corso Antonio Fogazzaro 16, Vicenza, Veneto, Italy
Coordinates: 45.5477° N, 11.5415° E
Designation: UNESCO World Heritage Site (1994) — part of “City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto”

Overview

Palazzo Valmarana Braga stands as one of Palladio’s most inventive urban commissions, occupying a prominent position on what is now Corso Fogazzaro. The palace’s facade introduces colossal pilasters that span the full height of the main floor, a device Palladio used here more boldly than in any earlier project. Its integration into the cityscape of Vicenza contributed directly to the city’s recognition as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

History

The commission was awarded by Isabella Nogarola Valmarana, whose family was among the most powerful noble houses of Vicenza. Palladio produced the designs in 1565 as part of his intensive period of urban palace design that also yielded Palazzo Chiericati and Palazzo Thiene. The palace later passed to the Braga family, whose name was appended to the original designation. Over the centuries the building underwent interior modifications while its celebrated facade was substantially preserved.

What you see

The principal facade is organised around six colossal Composite pilasters that rise from the ground floor to the cornice, framing bays of arched windows on the piano nobile and smaller rectangular openings below. A central portal with a triangular pediment marks the main entrance. The lateral bays feature atlas figures at ground level — an unusual sculptural accent that breaks from Palladio’s typically restrained ornamental vocabulary. Interior rooms retain painted ceilings from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Cultural significance

Valmarana Braga Palace is one of only a handful of Palladian urban palaces in Vicenza to survive largely intact, making it essential to understanding Palladio’s development of the monumental facade within the constraints of a medieval street grid. The colossal-order solution pioneered here reappears in Inigo Jones’s work in England and in countless Baroque civic buildings across Europe, marking the palace as a turning point in Western architectural history.

Practical information

Address: Corso Antonio Fogazzaro 16, 36100 Vicenza VI, Italy
Access: Private property; exterior freely visible from the street. Interior visits by appointment only — check current arrangements with the Vicenza tourist office.
Hours: Exterior: always accessible. Interior: check official sources.

Getting there

Vicenza railway station is approximately 1 km from the palace; follow Viale Roma and then Corso Fogazzaro on foot (about 12 minutes). By car, use the city centre parking areas on the ring road — Corso Fogazzaro is a limited-traffic zone. Several local bus lines stop on Viale Roma near the city centre.

Sources & resources

Find it on the map

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Valmarana Braga Palace is a palace built by the architect Andrea Palladio in 1565 and located in Vicenza, in corso Fogazzaro.

It is included in the list of 23 Palladian monuments of the city which is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The foundation medal of the building bears the date 1566 and the profile of Isabella Nogarola Valmarana, and it is the latter who signs the construction contracts with the masons in December 1565.



However, there is no doubt about the role played by her late husband Giovanni Alvise (who died in 1558) in choosing Palladio as the designer of the family palace. With Girolamo Chiericati, and of course Giangiorgio Trissino, in 1549 Valmarana had publicly supported Palladio&#39;s project for the Loggias of the Basilica, evidently on the basis of an estimate born six years earlier, when Giovanni Alvise oversaw the construction of the ephemeral apparatuses in honor of entry into Vicenza of the bishop Niccol&ograve; Ridolfi (1543), designed by Palladio under the direction of Trissino.



And a Palladian space, the Valmarana chapel in the church of Santa Corona, will host the mortal remains of Giovanni Alvise and Isabella, commissioned by their son Leonardo.

On the site then occupied by the new sixteenth-century palace, the Valmarana family had owned building properties since the end of the fifteenth century, which were gradually merged to form the object of the Palladian restructuring.



The planimetric irregularity of the rooms undoubtedly derives from the crooked course of the fa&ccedil;ade and of the pre-existing walls. In this sense, it is evident how the Olympic regularity of the palace plan presented in the Four Books of Architecture (Venice, 1570) is the result of the usual theoretical Palladian abstraction, especially since the extension of the palace beyond the square courtyard was not never built, but apparently not even sought after by Leonardo Valmarana, who appears to acquire neighboring properties rather than continue with the construction of the family palace.



During the Second World War, on March 18, 1945, the building suffered heavy damage due to an Allied bombing that destroyed the roof, part of the attic and most of the main hall on the noble floor.



The fa&ccedil;ade, on the other hand, remained intact and is still one of the rare examples that retain its original plaster and marble finish. In 1960 the ruined palace was sold by the Valmarana family to Vittor Luigi Braga Rosa, who carried out extensive restorations, rebuilding the parts demolished in the war and enriching the palace with decorations and works of art from other destroyed buildings, among which the collection stands out. of seventeenth-century canvases by Giulio Carpioni with a mythological subject.

https://culturalheritageonline.com/places/valmarana-braga-palace-l3898/

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