At the hub of the city, the Piazza dei Signori , stands the most awesome of Palladio’s creations - the Basilica . Designed in the late 1540s (but not finished until the second decade of the next century), this was Palladio’s first public project and the one that secured his reputation. The monumental regularity of the basilica disguises the fact that the Palladian building is effectively a stupendous piece of buttressing - the Doric and Ionic colonnades enclose the fifteenth-century hall of the city council, an unstable structure that had defied a number of attempts to prop it up before Palladio’s solution was place into effect. The vast Gothic hall is often used for good contemporary structure exhibitions (Tues-Sun: summer 10am-7pm; winter 9am-5pm; price varies).

As in the sixteenth century, a regular fruit, vegetable and flower market is pitched at the back of the basilica, in the Piazza dell’ Erbe ; if you’re shopping for picnic food, you’ll save money by going down the slope and over the river, where the shops are a good bit cheaper. On Tuesdays a general market spreads along the roads between the basilica and the duomo.

A late Palladio building, the unfinished Loggia del Capitaniato , faces the basilica crossways the Piazza dei Signori. Built as accommodation for the Venetian military commander of the city, it’s decorated with reliefs in celebration of the Venetian victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571.