A vitrine is a glass display case. The name is derived from vitre, glass in French. It has nothing to do with Vitruvius.
Fano has everything to do with Vitruvius. If you go to the Rossini Opera Festival at Pesaro, a trip to Fano makes an agreeable excursion for lunch. I hope it hasn’t changed but I had an excellent pranzo di ferragosto in a garden behind this discreet door.
La Quinta was the Sweetings of the Adriatic. No booking; deckhands and owners of yachts queued for a table; but I digress. Fano is an ancient township in the Marche.
But we must delve just a little deeper into Fano’s architectural legacy than 7 AD. Don’t be alarmed, only into the first century BC, to meet Marcus Vitruvius Pollio; Roman author, architect and civil and military engineer. None of his buildings survive, including his basilica at Fano. However, he described it and it has been reconstructed on paper.
His book, De architectura, survives him and is the earliest treatise on architecture until somebody digs up an older one.
Colen Campbell, a scion of the Cawdor Campbells, picked up the guttering flame of architectural enlightenment. (That’s not true but I enjoyed writing it.) He was generous to his mentor, calling his book of architectural designs Vitruvius Brittanicus. It is more advertorial than scholastic and he remembered to include his own buildings alongside those of Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones.
Among his other commissions you will know Burlington House (home of the RA) and Houghton Hall (home of David Cholmondeley, 7th Marquess of same). Not wanting to waste money on an architect he also designed his own home, 76 Brook Street (above).