The fifteenth-century "castle" of Thiene is really the Da Porto Colleoni villa in disguise: battlements and flamboyant Gothic windows from an age when country houses still had to look like fortresses. It ranks among the earliest Venetian villas, and a merchant town grew around it, whose Monday market remains an institution across the Vicenza area.
Today the town counts 23,254 residents and a dense web of small manufacturers. At Villa Fabris, a European centre for heritage crafts trains restorers from across the continent in the care of stone, wood and frescoes.
Near Thiene
The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
