Antonio Gaidon

For example, he read the Elements of Euclid, and delighted in reproducing the simple machines built by Bartolomeo Ferracina, an hydraulic engineer from Bassano.

His father introduced him to Daniello Bernardi who had studied architecture with Domenico Cerato and Francesco Maria Preti.

In 1769, he designed the Bonfadini Palace also known as the Gran Caffe Ausonia in the Piazza San Giovanni, in Bassano and in 1770, the Palazzo Scolari, now Marin, in Piazzetto dell’Angelo.

In 1769, he was appointed a land surveyor or "public appraiser", by the Council of the city of Bassano, a position he held for forty years.

Among his most important urban accomplishments in Bassano was the construction of the current Viale delle Fosse, a boulevard, which reclaimed the land along the eastern walls of the city.

[5] In 1776 he redesigned the Piazza San Francesco (now Garibaldi), infilling the ‘fossa’ (In English:pit or pool) which had been in the centre of the square to be used in cases of fire in the town.

[7] In his later years, between 1810 and 1812, Gaidon oversaw the work on two roads which, starting from Bassano, headed eastwards towards the Piave river and are still today, with some modifications, the arteries of main traffic routes in the area.

Gaidon's geological observations and studies of the vegetation and flora around Bassano, made their way into the numerous letters that appeared between 1778 and 1784 in the Natural Science columns of the Nuovo Giornale d'Italia.

These studies brought Gaidon into contact with the greatest geologists and naturalists of the time, such as Alberto Fortis, Deodat Gratet de Dolomieu and John Strange, as well as with the Bohemian paleontologist and botanist Count Kaspar Maria von Sternberg, who had him as a companion and guide,[10] in the herbal studies carried out in August 1803 in the Bassano area.