This great hall was Gothic inside and out until Palladio cased the front with open arcades, standing out from the walls and entirely concealing from below the old windows. These were large single lights with moulded jambs, but not of very good style. The original staircase remains with good marble shafted balustrades. The old work here is said to have been done before the year 1444, the hall having been burnt in 1389. This date is of some importance, as the walls of the upper portion are faced like the upper stage [Illustration: 20. CONTRADA PORTO. VICENZA. p. 131] of the Ducal Palace at Venice, with marble arranged in a diaper. The slender and lofty tower of brick which rises at one end of the building, the two Venetian columns (Vicenza became subject to Venice in 1404), and the Palazzo itself, in spite of its small architectural merit, combine to make a charming picture, rendered more beautiful when I saw it, by the animated crowd of peasants who filled the Piazza. The streets here are very picturesque, rather in spite of Palladio and Scamozzi than in consequence of what they did. Some of them are arcaded, and the Gothic houses are still very numerous. They are all, however, of late date--at least I saw none earlier than about 1350. They are of the same design as some of the well-known Venetian palaces, only here they rise out of narrow streets, instead of as they do there from the water. The usual arrangement is to have on the ground floor a single doorway, not necessarily central, and on the _piano nobile_ a fine traceried window with balconies in the centre, single windows also with balconies near the angles, and intermediate windows of the same design but without balconies. These are always treated in the same way with small shafts, and with animals seated on their angles, and are supported on bold corbels. All the carving that I saw was weak and confused in outline, and poor in detail, and the capitals are generally too large for the arch mouldings which rest on them--a common fault in Italian Gothic work. I give a view in the Contrada Porto which illustrates two of the best of these houses. Almost the whole of this street happens to consist of houses of the same age, and one of them has on one side of its internal courtyard open arcades on each story, the upper one having its balustrades remaining between the columns, similar in design to those in window-balconies.