The Northern Italian Province Is an Architecture Geek's Dream

For architecture devotees, there are a few sacred destinations--among them, Barcelona for its Gaudi; Istanbul for the Hagia Sophia; New Canaan for its modernism; and the Veneto, the northern Italian province renown for its collection of urban buildings and countryside villas by architect Andrea Palladio. There, in the center of Vicenza and the surrounding lush, green rolling hillsides is where 16th-century classicist Palladio laid the ordered, symmetrical groundwork for what would become the mos...