Religious, Spiritual sights in Padua
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Capella degli Scrovegni
Almost 200 years before Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and da Vinci’s Last Supper came Padua’s Renaissance breakthrough: Giotto’s moving, modern 1303–05 frescoes in the Capella degli Scrovegni. Medieval churchgoers were accustomed to blank stares from flat saints perched high on gold Gothic thrones – but Giotto introduces Biblical figures as characters in recognisable settings, caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Onlookers gossip as middle-aged Anne tenderly kisses Joachim, and late in life gives birth to miracle-baby Mary; exhausted new dad Joseph falls asleep sitting up in the manger, as sheep and angels take the night watch over baby Jesus; and Jesus sta…
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B
Padua Cathedral
South of the palazzo is the city’s cathedral, built from a much altered design of Michelangelo’s and completely upstaged by the adjoining 13th-century Baptistry. This Romanesque gem is completely frescoed with luminous Biblical scenes by Giusto de’ Menabuoi, a Giotto follower and master in his own right for the cupola depicting hundreds of male and female saints posed as though for a school graduation photo, exchanging glances and stealing looks at the Madonna. The inside of the dome shows Christ Pantocrator holding an open book inscribed with the words Ego sum alpha et omega (I am the beginning and the end), and the rear apse wall illustrates his meaning with fresc…
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C
Oratorio di San Giorgio
The Oratorio di San Giorgio was frescoed with the life stories of St George, St Lucy and St Catherine of Alexandria in jewel-like colour by Altichiero da Zevio and Jacopo Avanzi in 1378, and briefly used as a prison by Napoleon – who apparently missed the message of St George’s liberation from the torture wheel by avenging angels. Your ticket allows entry next door to the upstairs Scoletta del Santo, with dramatic Titian paintings that include a 1511 portrait of St Anthony calmly reattaching his own foot as an onlooker gasps, and a riveting parable, painted by Titian’s brother Francesco Vecellio, showing a doctor discovering a miser’s heart is missing, just as a neighbour…
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D
Basilica del Santo
The soul of the city is the Basilica del Santo, a key pilgrimage site and burial site of the town’s patron saint, St Anthony of Padua (1193–1231). To get here, head from Piazza delle Erbe east along Via San Francesco, and when you hit Via del Santo, turn south and you emerge in the grand square of the same name. Construction of the church nicknamed Il Santo began in 1232, and over the years took on an unmistakable polyglot style: atop a Latin Cross base is the brick Italian Gothic structure, topped by a series of domes and towers that seem to take their cue from the east.
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E
Chiesa degli Eremitani
When a 1944 bombing raid demolished the extraordinary 1448–57 frescoes by Andrea Mantegna in the Capella Overtari in the Chiesadegli Eremitani, the loss to art history was incalculable. After half a century of painstaking reconstruction, the shattered, humidity-damaged stories of Saints James and Christopher have been puzzled together, revealing action-packed compositions and extreme perspectives that make Mantegna’s saints look like superheroes.
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F
St Anthony's Basilica
Padua's most celebrated monument is the majestic Basilica del Santo, housing the remains of the town's patron saint (St Anthony of Padua - he of the lost-and-found items). Construction of the basilica began in 1232 and it's now an important place of pilgrimage. The sculptures and reliefs of the high altar are by Florentine Renaissance master Donatello.
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