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CONTEMPORARY ARCHITECTURE · COLLI BERICI
A Pritzker Prize architect turned a flooded Vicenza quarry into a stage
White Vicenza stone, underground water and a performance space carved into a former quarry
Beneath a wooded hill in Zovencedo, sixty years of quarrying left a vast underground chamber supported by irregular stone piers and partly filled with water. David Chipperfield Architects and Laboratorio Morseletto spent eight years turning that accidental landscape into Cavea Arcari, a performance space made almost entirely from the same white Vicenza stone once extracted here. The intervention is deliberately spare: platforms, steps and ramps sit between the original quarry pillars, while lighting by Viabizzuno reflects across the flooded chambers
David Chipperfield by Bruno Cordioli, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Know before you go
Cavea Arcari is not a conventional museum or daily attraction. Access depends on special events, guided visits, architecture programmes and private openings. Check the current organiser or event source before travelling Phone +39 0444 563155 Email morseletto@morseletto.com Event enquiries eventi@morseletto.com Access Special events and guided visits only. Contact Laboratorio Morseletto before travelling.
About
Leave Vicenza heading south and the city gives way surprisingly quickly to the Colli Berici, a low landscape of vines, olive trees, woods and tiny roads climbing between old stone villages. Zovencedo is quarry country. Pietra di Vicenza has been cut from these hills for centuries, leaving great chambers beneath the woodland. One of them became Cavea Arcari. David Chipperfield Architects worked with the Morseletto family for eight years, placing pale stone terraces and platforms among the enormous original quarry pillars. Water was left around them, so evening light reaches deep inside the hill and catches its reflection behind the stage.
MICHAEL NYMAN OPENED IT
Cavea Arcari is an underground performance venue carved into one of the old quarries of the Colli Berici, around Zovencedo south of Vicenza. The quarry had supplied Pietra di Vicenza for decades before David Chipperfield Architects converted 1,880 square metres of its chambers into a venue for music and performance. Original quarry pillars remain between new white stone steps and terraces, while water still fills parts of the excavation. The project opened in 2018 with Michael Nyman at the piano: for the 2018 inauguration, Michael Nyman played music from The Piano, Gattaca and Wonderland, while saxophone quartets performed from different platforms around the quarry. Cavea Arcari has since become one of those rare architecture destinations in Italy and It has been published by Domus and Arquitectura Viva, which put the project on its cover.
VISITING CAVEA ARCARI
Cavea Arcari is not a conventional attraction with daily opening hours. Access is usually tied to concerts, architecture visits, private events or guided group visits. Published examples include architecture tours, the Michael Nyman inauguration performances and special cultural events inside the quarry.
The quarry environment also affects how you visit. For a 2019 event, guests were specifically advised to dress for an underground temperature of around 13°C and to wear shoes with rubber soles