VIII.v. Four at Ca' Sette

"The place is nicely situated and one of the loveliest and most charming that one could hope to find; for it lies on the slopes of a hill, which is very easy to reach. The loveliest hills are arranged around it, which afford a view into an immense theatre."
- Andrea Palladio

Asparagus season happily coincided this year with mid-spring in the Veneto, when the various fruit trees that dot the landscape start to bloom, brightening the often dull weather. It was nice to get out into the country, to go northward as spring advanced. Bologna is so completely urban, so devoid of public greenery, that at times it can seem more of an unabated metropolis than even New York city. Granted, the concealed courtyards and verdant rooftop terraces must provide some respite to those who have them, but for the student the city is nothing but bricks, marble, and books. When the sun becomes strong again and casts long shadows along the porticoes, wider spaces beckon.
    I had for these reasons willingly consented to touring the Veneto in a group consisting of my cousin once removed Sophie, her late-life partner Gerry, and my mother, who had arrived the previous day for a two-week jaunt in Italy. Sophie and Gerry, living comfortable in the outskirts of Geneva, have become world travelers in their later years; their week in Northern Italy was somewhat tame compared to their other destinations, which made me all the more determined to plan for them an eventful few days.
    My Swiss relatives, especially the Genevois, have always treated me well. I spent a crucial summer in Switzerland once, hosted by them. I was always on the outside, as the visiting cousin, and therefore didn't have to deal with the almost endemic animosity that exists within that side of the family. Sophie, to me the dearest of them, takes it all in stride, and fortunately sees the humour in the fact that eleven out of the thirteen cousins in her generation have divorced.

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    We met in the morning at Padova and drove west to Vicenza, the next city inland. Vicenza is the centre of architectural tourism in Northern Italy. Palladio, the famous villa-builder, was born here and examples of his work dot the surrounding landscape, each bearing the name of the wealthy patrician family who commissioned it. This is the domain of the Italian garden, the green, flowerless terraces that often outdo the buildings they encircle in grandeur. Many of the villas are still owned by the ancestors, reduced in means, living frugally from admission tickets bought by the general public. Sometimes, the mere chance to walk through the great rooms of these mansions, still furnished with centuries of family heirlooms, occasionally crossing a forlorn looking marquis, is worth the visit; sometimes, like a neglected plantation or a ancient Greek ruin, it is nothing but depressing. We stopped first at Villa Capra Valmarana, known more colloquially as La Rotonda, one of Palladio's most characteristic creations, copied, recreated, transposed by architects as far away as Saint Petersburg, Delhi, and London. Palladio's vocabulary, much loved in the twentieth century, four hundred years after his death, has become hackneyed the world over. Even Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's slave-built paradise in the wooded hills of Virginia, owes much to La Rotonda.
    Central Vicenza, one of the most beautiful historic centres in the Veneto, has nothing of the outlying Palladian decadence. Elegant, lively, handsome, it embodies the ebullient spirit of the modern Veneto; its political by-product is the Lega Nord, the secessionist political party that is a constant, numb threat to Italian unity.
    We spent the afternoon in Vicenza, saw an exhibition that traced the development of the Villa from Petrarch to Carlo Scarpa, and visited the Teatro Olimpico, another Palladian creation, the oldest wooden theatre in the world. Then, on my directions, we drove north in the little blue Ford Sophie had rented for our tour. I had booked at a hotel for us in Bassano del Grappa, a town at the foot of the first Dolomite hills, on the edge of the Venetian plain, home of the liqueur that has far outshone the town in fame. Nevertheless, Bassano is still a charming place, with its characteristic wooden bridge that spans the Brenta as it descends from the Alps into the wide, green plain. The Ca' Sette, as the hotel was called, was in an eighteenth century villa, impeccably renovated in the most modern way. Our dinner, in the restaurant next door, was among the most refined I had ever had in Italy. Here, well north of Bologna, the cuisine makes use of more complex ingredients, is more subtle, and relies more on the skill of the cook than on the ingredients alone.
    I thought, as I tucked into a plate of white asparagus risotto, about how I had been spoiled by this nation. There are no truly bad restaurants in Italy of the kind that is so commonplace in the rest of the world. I thought further, too, about how, maybe, there is nothing at all truly bad in Italy for whoever remains only a visitor, one exempt from the societal pains and troublesome integration. Then, recalling the events of the day, how I had guided my company around the region as if it was my own, how I enjoyed and delighted in showing other people what this place has to offer, I wondered if I really still was just a visitor.