Unlike most 16th-century architects, Palladio was an architect of bridges: bridges in stone, wood and on paper. These last undoubtedly had a greater impact on the figurative culture of the following centuries: printed in the pages of The Four Books, the treatise published in Venice in 1570, they became the protagonists of the dreams of the 18th-century artists. Algarotti asked Canaletto to show him the Rialto bridge, given that Palladio had designed it. But Bellotto, Carlevarijs and Piranesi also made bridges their privileged subjects in their ‘veduta’ paintings.
 
The exhibition recounts the myth of the bridge, but at the same time speaks of a bridge that has been concrete and real for 500 years, the bridge of Bassano, designed by Palladio, destroyed and rebuilt several times in an epic that ranges from the 18th century and Ferracina, to the present and the 'Bridge of the Alpini'. The exhibition’s story begins with Palladio's original drawings and takes us through 16th-century books, ancient maps, 18th-century paintings, late 19th-century photographs, and contemporary study models.

The exhibit, curated by Guido Beltramini, Barbara Guidi, Fabrizio Magani, and Vincenzo Tiné, was promoted by the Municipality of Bassano del Grappa to celebrate the completion of the lengthy restoration work on the Alpini Bridge, also called the 'Ponte Vecchio'.