Visiting Vicenza if ignorant of Andrea Palladio is like arriving in London having never heard of the Royal Family. You don’t quite get the point. You flail. You’re left behind in conversations.

It happened to me. Of course, I was on solid ground with Roberto Baggio and Paolo Rossi, two other lads local to this Venetian hinterland. But Andrea Palladio? Which team did he play for? Fortunately, I hadn’t time to ask before Wilma the guide was showing me round Vicenza’s splendid old town and pointing out the buildings designed by a man who, it transpired, was the 16th century’s most influential architect. Ah, that Palladio. But of course.

There were palaces, there was the green-domed basilica, and down the street, there was the extraordinary Teatro Olimpico: effectively a classical outdoor theatre created inside a medieval fortress building. It was even better than football.

Quite simply, old Andrea is the Renaissance current running through, and defining, Vicenza. And like all civilised places, the town lives easily with the grandeur, as if things couldn’t possibly be otherwise. It claims proportionately more aristocrats than anywhere else in Italy, which may help.

But grandeur and nobility aren’t confined to the city.

Palladio’s villas, which so impressed later generations of Anglo-American builders, dot provincial Vicenza’s landscape. Going north from the plain, village-topped hills give way to tougher mountains — the Asiago plateau, Monte Grappa — stained by first world war bloodshed. Hemingway was at Bassano with the Red Cross.

Folk have always worked hard here. These days the region is a jewellery centre, and light industry is woven into the farming flatlands. But that just lends an air of prosperity to the place. Off the main tracks, the landscape remains unspoilt — but awake. There’s none of the dozy menace of some zones further south.

Visitors to this slice of northeast Italy generally overlook Vicenza province to stay in Venice or Verona. Let me suggest that you do the reverse. It’s cheaper, the tourist population is smaller — and you can get to the other two “Vs” by train within an hour. Most of all, there is a scattering of lovely hotels in fab locations.

A couple of them test our £100-per-double limit, but believe me, they’re worth it. You might not be a Vicenza aristocrat, but these will give you a feel for the role.

All prices are for a double room, including breakfast

HOTEL VILLA MICHELANGELO
Arcugnano

So, you go up the hill south from Vicenza, then up a bit more, then depart real life and enter the gates of the Hotel Villa Michelangelo. You’d better have done something good to deserve this.

As long as a short street, and with stateliness to spare, the 18th-century building is trimmed with loggias, trees and big lawns. Go to the edge, look down over the valley and you’ll realise why Italian aristos felt both attached to their land and also removed from it.

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