Vicenza and Ai Nani

This past Friday I visited Vicenza and some of the surrounding regions.  We first went to a theater from the 1500s completely in Greek style, designed by Andrea Palladio, one of Venice's most renowned architects. The theater was designed to created to resemble Thebes with the seven roads of Thebes and a point of view illusion behind the stage made completely of wood. They still do plays there today.

     After going to the theater, we stopped at a villa called "Ai Nani" ("Villa of the Dwarfs"_  I have never seen anything like it. The villa in and of itself is beautiful, and it is surrounding by a wall with little statues of different professions on it. The weirdest thing, however, is that the statues are all of dwarfs. It looks like something out of "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" or "Lord of the Rings." You feel almost like you are the adventurer who has stumbled on something that seems normal, but a little off what you are used to as normal - the same sensation you get that Alice feels when reading Alice in Wonderland; the one where you realize that this is a reality other than yours. Legend has it that the owners of this village were little people, and they created an environment for their daughter, who was also a dwarf, in which she believed everyone was small. They had the statues built on the wall, their house help were all tiny, and their daughter never had exposre to the taller world. One day, inevitably, a tall and handsome man came riding by on his horse. She saw him, starting talking to him, and fell in love. She also realized that she was not like this man, and that her reality was false. In despair, she killed herself.  Whether or not this legend is true, I don't know, but it is sad and interesting at the same time, and this villa is truly l'unica (one of a kind).