Le scale di Vicenza

During the night of March 18-19, 1590, a furious fire destroyed the house existing here, belonging to Stefano Valmarana, on the angle between Corso Palladio and the slope of S. Corona: a house which must have been of a certain importance if the 1563-1564 property assessment records it with "ground floor rooms and spaces, with basement cellar and well and shops towards the main street, with rooms in the attic and with hall". Stefano's son, Marcantonio, rebuilt it, however, and with decisiveness - post fata resurgo! - terminating the works in 1593.
The debate concerning the most plausible paternity of the new building in reality an imposing palazzo which has fortunately come down to us intact and indeed exalted by a recent providential restoration - leads one to opt for attributbn to Vincenzo Scamozzi who was engaged here in the culminating phase of his parabola immediately following his plan (1592) for the nearby palazzo of Giangaleazzo on Corso Palladio and, at the same time, starting off (1593) the Buodo Villa on the Nil at Monselice. The urban situation, with things such as the relative architectural solution offered it by Palazzo Valmarana, is really analogous to that presented by other Scamozzi masterpieces: apart from the already-mentioned Palazzo Trissino on Corso Palladio, also the youthful Trissino at the ICathedral (1577-1578) and house of the Godi brothers not much later (1598).
In each of these cases, the building is placed at the junction of two streets, becoming in practice a block built around an internal courtyard but open, then, to the streets by axes of penetration and communication corresponding to the two atriums and the associated gateways: one, perhaps, more important than the other, depending on whether they open onto the main or the side street. In 1651, the palazzo built by Marcantonio passed to the descendents of a certain Maddalena Valmarana married to Ercole Fortezza; and in the first half of the eighteenth century it returned to the Valmarana family. But it was now in a pitiful con- dition so that the Valmaranas, including a certain Massimiliano whom we will find again later on, preferred to sell it to Antonio Salvi and his nephews (deed of the notary Paris Bonazzoli dated June 6, 1757).
The Salvi family, originally from Bergamo, had accumu-lated wealth in Verona through the salami trade and they were ashamed of it in a society in which inherited blood was of such great importance. For this reason, the city of Verona had already refused to accept them in its council meetings. And this, perhaps, was the reason for their transfer to Vicenza where, having ingra-tiated themselves with the local powers by means of a generous donation to the local Monte di Pietà, they finally obtained for themselves, and for their offspring, the right to membership of the