San Nicoló

The Church of San Nicoló, just inside the city walls, is an interesting 13th century Romanesque construction (with bits of Gothic chucked in later). Interesting because of the clearly brick construction which characterises many of the buildings in Treviso, a consequence of the shortage of building stone in the area. This has also given rise, on the houses in the town, to an abundance of painted stucco, just as Palladio did on most of his villas. Apparently structural timber was even more expensive so that often stone vaults were constructed as a substitute for timber beams, though the presence of a timber roof in San Nicoló is, I suspect more likely to be a modern replacement for an earlier stone vault, rather than an ostentatious manifestation of wealth.