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The City
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The city's architecture is well preserved in the main street of the centre,
Calmaggiore
, where modern commerce (epitomized by the omnipresent Benetton, a Trevisan firm) has reached the sort of compromise with the past that the Italians seem to arrange better than anyone else. Modern building techniques have played a larger part than you might think in shaping that compromise - Treviso was pounded during both world wars and on Good Friday 1944 was half destroyed in a single bombing raid.
The early thirteenth-century Palazzo dei Trecento , at the side of the Piazza dei Signori , was one casualty of 1944 - a line round the exterior shows where the restoration began. The adjoining Palazzo del PodestA is a nineteenth-century structure, concocted in an appropriate style. Of more interest are the two churches at the back of the block: San Vito and Santa Lucia . The tiny, dark chapel of Santa Lucia has extensive frescoes by Tomaso da Modena and his followers; San Vito has even older paintings in the alcove through which you enter from Santa Lucia, though they're not in a good state. The cathedral of Treviso, San Pietro , stands at the end of Calmaggiore (Mon-Sat 7.30am-noon & 3.30-7pm, Sun 7.30am-1pm & 3.30-8pm). Founded in the twelfth century, San Pietro was much altered in succeeding centuries, and then rebuilt to rectify the damage of 1944. The interior is chiefly notable for the crypt - a thicket of twelfth-century columns with scraps of medieval mosaics - and the Cappella Malchiostro, with fragmentary frescoes by Pordenone and an Annunciation by Titian.
Just over the River Sile from the railway station is the severe Dominican church of
San NicolA?
(Mon-Fri 8am-12.30pm & 3.30-7pm), which has frescoes dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Some of the columns are decorated with paintings by Tomaso da Modena and his school, of which the best are the
SS Jerome
and
Agnes
(by Tomaso) on the first column on your right as you enter; there's also a towering
St Christopher
, on the wall of the right aisle, painted around 1410 and attributed to Antonio da Treviso. Equally striking, but far more graceful, is the composite
Tomb of Agostino d'Onigo
on the north wall of the chancel, created in 1500 by Antonio Rizzo (who did the sculpture) and Lorenzo Lotto (who painted the attendant pages). The figures of Agnes and Jerome are an excellent introduction to Tomaso da Modena, but for a comprehensive demonstration of his talents you have to visit the neighbouring
Seminario
, where the chapter house is decorated with a series of forty
Portraits of Members of the Dominican Order
, executed in 1352 (Mon-Fri: summer 8am-6pm; winter 8am-12.30pm & 3-5.30pm; free). Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Italy,
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