A way to visit Vicenza is to retrace the footsteps of many great writers of which the city was home. Here's what he wrote Guido Piovene in his "Viaggio in Italia" (Italian Journey):  "It's curious  for me to get to Vicenza as a traveler and diarist.  I have born here;  I have spent my childhood and part of my youth;  I owe to it maybe the best part of my work. As soon as I enter the city takes me wonder. The Italian Renaissance, especially the later, when architecture was obedient only to the imagination and pleasure, has something chimerical. But nowhere, I think, as in Vicenza. I am not speaking of the Gothic houses, that Vicenza has in common with other cities of the Veneto. I mention to Palladio and his pupils, the magnificent complex of arches, loggias, columns (...)
Arches and colonnades were built without any other reason than aesthetic complacency, the moody fantasies of culture,  the noble pride. In England, in America, in Charlottesville I found the reflections of this brilliant madness. So know Palladio, the Basilica, the Loggia del Capitanio, the Rotonda, the Olympic Theatre, the Palazzo Chiericati and others through studies is an imperfect knowledge. You have to see it in Vicenza. A little Rome, a spectacular invention, located at the corner of Veneto, in view of the mountains, by the culture evaporating in patrician caprice and vanity of a group of gentlemen with medium power and little political weight.
(...)
The charm of Vicenza is the counterpoint between his neoclassical contrast and Venetiancolor, semi-Oriental,  that penetrates everywhere.