most endless series of palaces and houses can be found in Venice,
all of them rich, but few of great extent, for every foot of space had
to be won from the sea by laborious engineering. There are some
features which never fail to present themselves, and which are
consequences of the conditions under which the structures were
designed. All rise from the water, and require to admit of gondolas
coming under the walls; hence there is always a principal central
entrance with steps in front, but this entrance never has any sort of
projecting portico or porch, and is never very much larger than the
other openings in the front. As a straight frontage to the water had
to be preserved, we hardly ever meet with such a thing as a break or
projection of any sort; but the Venetian architects have found other
means of giving interest to their elevations, and it is to the very
restrictions imposed by circumstances that we owe the great
originality displayed in their earlier buildings. The churches do not
usually front directly on to the water; and though they are almost all
good of their kind, they are far more commonplace than the palaces.
The system of giving variety to the facade of the secular buildings by
massing openings near the centre, has been already referred to. Both
shadow and richness were also aimed at in the employment of projecting
balconies; in fact the two usually go together, for the great central
window or group of windows mostly has a large and rich balcony
belonging to it.

Not far from Venice is Vicenza, and here Palladio, whose best
buildings in Venice are churches, such, for example, as the Redentore
(Fig. 68), enjoyed an opportunity of erecting a whole group of
palaces, the fronts of which are extremely remarkable as designs;
though, being executed in brick and plastered, they are now falling to
ruin. There is much variety in them, and while some of them rely upon
his device of lofty pilasters to include two storeys of the building
under one storey of architectural treatment, others are handled
differently. In all a singularly fine feeling for proportion and for
the appropriate omission as well as introduction of ornament is to be
detected. The worst defect of these fronts is, however, that they
appear more like masks than the exteriors of buildings, for there is
little obvious connection between the features of the exterior and
anything which we may suppose to exist inside the building. The
finest architectu