Mike Riccetti
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  • The best of Houston dining
    • Guinness pours
    • Italian
    • Steakhouses
    • Wine Bars
  • The margherita pizza project
  • The martini project
  • Musings on Houston Dining
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2018
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2017
    • The top 10 new restaurants of 2016
    • The 10 best Inner Loop values
    • Dining recommendations for visitors to Houston
  • Italian restaurant history
  • Italian & Italian-American
  • Entertaining tips
    • Booze basics
    • Styles of Cheeses
    • Handling Those Disruptive Guests
  • Wine
  • Beer
  • Cocktails and Spirits
  • Miscellaneous
  • Blog
Mike Riccetti

Mostly food and drink...

...and mostly set in Houston

A hidden gem off the beaten path in Italy: the Piazza Ducale in Vigévano

11/17/2019

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​A trip to the small town of Vigévano – pronounced vee-JAY-ven-oh – was part of the itinerary on a recent gastronomic sojourn to Pavia, south of Milan and its environs.  I had never heard of Vigevano much less its splendid piazza, the Piazza Ducale that provides a grand and beautiful centerpiece for this town of around 60,000 about 25 miles southwest of Milan.  It is one of the most impressive piazzas in its own way that I’ve seen in Italy, as much so as the far more famous and visited seaside St. Mark’s Square in Venice and the scallop-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena.
 
Built according to the ideal Renaissance proportions of three-to-one for such matters, the rectangular piazza measures something like 48 meters by 144 meters and was designed in the 1490s by Bramante, later the original chief architect of St. Peter’s in Rome.  Continuous three-story arcades line three sides while a magnificent concave baroque façade of the cathedral that more than aptly caps one end of the piazza.  This was instigated in the late 1600s by a Spanish bishop, Juan Caramuel de Labkowitz, who later presided over the congregation.  Decorative light-colored cobble stones from the nearby Ticino River contrastingly provide attractive geometric designs and a subtle sense of dynamism to the piazza, which is studded with cast iron lampposts, an addition from early in the past century.  A visit to it was a delight, even on a rainy and chilly day. 
 
The sense of specialness of the piazza is related in the city’s website with a vignette about the famed conductor “Arturo Toscanini, [who] despite his ill health, asked to be taken to Vigevano to sit at the tables of the bars around the square, as he considered Piazza Ducale to be a musical symphony, a four-sided orchestral composition akin to the four movements of symphonies.”  A beautiful one at that.
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    Mike Riccetti is a longtime Houston-based food writer and former editor for Zagat, and not incidentally the author of three editions of Houston Dining on the Cheap.

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