Vicenza (Vicenza)

Vicenza is a quintessentially mid-sized Italian railway station, its binari (tracks/platforms) sit under long concrete canopies with Art-Decco styling, which span most of their length.
Under the canopies, in the middle of the binari, are waiting rooms.

Also typical for an Italian station is the access between the main station building and the trains.
There are two marble-lined passage ways beneath the railway lines, with the main passage way only having access by stairs; and at the city end there are stairs which connect it to the main hall.
The secondary, less obvious, passage way is accessed by elevators, thereby providing step-free access to and from the trains which use binari 2 – 6 (the Frecce, Italo and EuroCity trains all use this part of the station).

Binari 1 and 7 and 8 are all directly accessible from the main station building.

Though something to watch out for is that when the departure indicator is showing that a train will be departing from binario (platform/track) 2, an easy assumption to make is that the train will also use binario 1; the binario that’s located right beside the entrance hall and ticket office.
That’s because there is only one railway track between binari 1 and 2, so when a train using binario 2 arrives at the station, its doors of the left-hand side will be facing on to binario 1.
So the assumption is that you may as well wait on binario 1 for the train and save the bother of using the passage way to access binario 2.
However, as ShowMeTheJourney discovered this can be a mistake, as the driver will only open the doors on the right-hand side of the train, meaning that the train can only be accessed from binario 2.

The location of Vicenza railway station is also typical of a large Italian town, as it is a little distant from the heart of the town, Italian railway constructors avoided smashing their way through the historical town centres.

Therefore the heart of Vicenza, the eternally beautiful Piazza dei Signori is a 12 – 20 minute walk from the railway station.
On exiting the station go straight ahead on to the right-hand side of the wide street named Viale Roma, which at its station end, passes through a small park.
At the end of Viale Roma, over to the right are the ancient gates, go straight ahead on the other side of the arches, on to the pedestrian street named ‘Corsa Andrea Palladio’, which crosses through the town’s gorgeous central area.

The street is named after the legendary 16th century architect, and it is thanks to his surviving works that Vicenza has UNESCO World Heritage status.
The ‘palaces’ in the town centre are all within a 15-25 min walk of the railway station, though the area around the Teatro Olimpico, is on the north-east area of Vicenza, the opposite part of the town from the station.
An option for accessing this part of town is to take one of the local buses, routes/lines 1, 2, 4, 5 and 7 all link Vicenza station to the area around the Teatro Olimpico.

Bus routes/lines 8 and 13 connect Vicenza railway station to one of Palladio’s most iconic buildings, the Villa Rotunda.

Vicenza also makes a great base location for exploring the best of northern Italy by train, with Padua/Padova, Verona and Venice all within easy reach by Regionale (R and RV trains) on which tickets cost the same price if you book at the last minute.

Regional Veloce trains also provide easy access to Lake Garda from Vicenza, thanks to the stations at Peschiera and Desenzano.
While the icing on the cake, which is why ShowMeTheJourney chose to stay in Vicenza instead of Verona, is that a branch off of the main Milano <> Venice railway line, links Vicenza to Treviso