Ponte degli Alpini

The Ponte degli Alpini is a covered wooden bridge over the Brenta, built to Andrea Palladio's design of 1569 on a crossing documented since 1209. It has been destroyed and rebuilt to the same drawings again and again -- most recently after 1945, by the Alpini regiments whose name it carries.

This is a timber structure carrying far more foot traffic than it was designed for, freshly out of a restoration completed in 2022. Crowding onto it for photographs at peak times is exactly the load it does not need -- going early costs nothing and helps.

It is also a working crossing used by residents daily, not a viewing platform. Standing still in the middle of a narrow deck at busy times is the one genuinely inconsiderate thing a visitor can do here.

Free, open and permanently accessible -- it is a working public bridge, not a monument with hours. Crossing takes two minutes; most people take considerably longer.

Five minutes' walk downhill from Bassano's central squares, ten from the station. Nardini's bar and the Alpini museum are both at the western end.