The first performance in Vicenza’s spectacular Teatro Olimpico – a production of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex – took place on 3 March 1585. More than four hundred years later, the set from that performance is still on the stage of the theatre.

The last and greatest masterwork of architect Andrea Palladio, the Teatro Olimpico is now the oldest of only three surviving Renaissance theatres, and it’s breathtaking.

The design is based closely on ancient Roman theatres, but the Teatro Olimpico’s classic columns and statues are of timber and plaster not marble (the more affordable alternative), though it’s remarkably difficult to see the difference.

The scenery, too, is a masterstroke of deception. Depicting a Roman city, it was cleverly designed to give the impression of streets receding off into the distance, an effect enhanced on opening night through the use of short-statured actors and smaller than usual oil lamps at the back of the stage.

We travelled to Vicenza specifically to see Palladio’s remarkable theatre and other magnificent examples of his work that remain in the small city.

And we timed our visit to attend a performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion by the Teatro Armonico, an ensemble of singers and musicians whose instruments are exact replicas the Baroque originals.

The orchestra, the soloists and the chorus all were wonderful. It was a performance that, in any venue, would have been worthy of the standing ovation it received; in the Teatro Olimpico it was something else again.