Sights in Padua
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Palazzo Bò
The main part of the university is housed in Palazzo Bò. Bò means 'ox' in the Veneto dialect and is named after an inn that previously occupied the site. Established in 1222, the university is Italy's oldest after the one in Bologna. Europe's first anatomy theatre opened here in 1594, and Galileo Galilei taught at the university from 1592 to 1610. The main courtyard and its halls are plastered with coats of arms of the great and learned from across Europe.
Inside, aside from the beautiful, elliptical anatomy theatre, the highlights are a simple wooden lectern said to have been Galileo's and the Aula Magna, the main classroom until the 19th century (when the frescoes…
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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…
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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…
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Padua Cathedral Baptistry
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…
reviewed
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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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University
Follow Via VIII Febbraio to the Palazzo del Bò, seat of Padua’s history-making university. This institution was founded by renegade scholars from Bologna seeking greater intellectual freedom, and some of Italy’s greatest and most controversial thinkers taught here, including Copernicus, Galileo, Casanova, and the world’s first woman doctor of philosophy, Eleonora Lucrezia Corner Piscopia (her statue graces the stairs). Guided tours cover Galileo’s lecture hall and the world’s first Anatomy Theatre, a six-tiered hall built for scientific autopsy in 1594 before biohazards were understood – dissected corpses were dumped into an underground stream.
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Palazzo della Ragione
Ancient Padua can be glimpsed in elegant twin squares framed by arcades, the Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta, separated by the triple- decker Gothic Palazzo della Ragione, the city’s tribunal dating from 1218. Inside, frescoes by Giotto acolytes Giusto de’ Menabuoi and Nicolò Mireto depict the astrological theories of Pietro d’Abano, with images representing the months, seasons, saints, animals and noteworthy Paduans (not necessarily in that order). Unfortunately, the frescoes had to be restored after fire in 1420 and storm damage in 1756, so most of the original work was lost.
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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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Museo del Risorgimento e Dell’età Contemporanea
Since 1831, this neoclassical landmark has been a favourite of Stendhal and other pillars of Padua’s cafe society for heart-poundingly powerful coffee and caffè correto (coffee cocktails). The grand 1st floor is decorated in styles ranging from ancient Egyptian to Imperial, and during the day you can visit the Museo del Risorgimento e dell’Età Contemporanea, recounting local and national history from the fall of Venice in 1797 until the republican constitution of 1848 in original documents, images and mementos.
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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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Orto Botanico
South of Piazza del Santo, a Unesco World Heritage site is growing. Padua’s Orto Botanico was planted in 1545 by Padua University’s medical faculty to study the medicinal properties of rare plants, and served as a clandestine Resistance meeting headquarters in WWII. The oldest tree in here is nicknamed ‘Goethe’s palm’, planted in 1585 and mentioned by the great German writer in his Voyage in Italy.
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Scoletta del Santo
The Scoletta del Santo has a series of works by various authors on the life of St Anthony. The three by a young Titian (done in 1510-11) stand out, partly because they depict the saint's activities in the background and other events in the foreground. Take for example a classic theme: Il marito geloso pugnala la moglie (The Jealous Husband Stabs his Wife). The vicious act takes precedence over the saint's intervention.
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Musei Civici Agli Eremitani
A converted monastery houses on the ground floor artefacts dating from Padua’s pre-Roman history, and, upstairs, notable 14th- to 18th-century works by Veneto artists from Bellini to Canova. The showstopper is a crucifix by Giotto, showing a heartbroken Mary wringing her hands as Jesus’s blood drips through the rocky earth, right into the empty eye sockets of a human skull.
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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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Palazzo Zuckermann
Home to the Museo d’Arti Applicate e Decorative decorative-arts museum, covering flatware to fashion on the ground and 1st floors, and the 2nd-floor Museo Bottacin, a treasury of finely worked ancient coins, pistols and knives, and medals and badges of dishonour.
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Museo Antoniano
This musuem holds a collection of art and religious objects done for Padua's basilica and convent.
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Scrovegni Chapel
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Eremitani Church
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Basilica di Sant’Antonio
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