Via Romea Germanica: Padova

So far as any single place could claim the honour of being the seat of the scientific revolution, the distinction must belong to Padua.

- Herbert Butterfield, The Origin of Modern Science (1962)

According to the legend, the city of Padova (Padua in English) was founded 1132 years before Christ by one Antenor, a prince of Troy who escaped the destruction of his city. But this is merely a legend, told by Titus Livius in order to reinforce the ties between Rome and his city, then known as Patavium; the people of Padua were so enthusiastic about the story that when an ancient sarcophagus was found in the city in 1274, officials immediately annouced it was the tomb of Antenor. 

The supposed "tomb of Antenor"

Ruins of the Roman arena in Padova

Roman arena and sculpture garden 

Roman mosaics now in the Museo Eremitani 

Roman glassware from a necropolis on the site of the train station

 

More than a hundred ancient Roman mosaic floors have been uncovered around the city, some of which are now on display in the Museo Eremitani,  adjacent to the Scrovegni Chapel. 

Padua was gradually assimilated into the Roman republic, and by the end of the first century A.D. it was the wealthiest city in Italy, other than Rome itself. With a population of around 40,000, the city was renowned for its strict morality and discipline. 

Sacked by Attila the Hun in the year 450, the city fell under the control of the Goths, and then of the Lombards. In the eleventh century the city of Padua established a constitution and a legislative assembly; the university was opened in 1222, and construction of the basilica dedicated to Saint Anthony also began in the thirteenth century. Padua came under the rule of the Republic of Venice in 1405, largely remaining under its control until the fall of the republic in 1797.

The Scrovegni Chapel

On February 6, 1300, wealthy banker Enrico Scrovegni acquired the area of the former Roman amphitheatre and began construction of a chapel dedicated to the Madonna, annexed to the Scrovegni palace. Enrico wished to celebrate the family name by offering a prestigious tribute to the Madonna of Charity.

The new property would be constructed, as recorded in the 1317 act of endowment, "for the honour and advantage of the city and the Comune, and in homage to its soul and to its forefathers". Scrovegni also wished to re-establish a site that had formerly witnessed pagan games as a seat of Christian rites, and he intended that the church "Sancte Marie de Caritate de I'Arena de Padova" would contain his mortal remains, as well as those of his family. On March 25, 1303, the chapel was consecrated; Giotto, the greatest painter of the time, executed the paintings between 1303 and 1305. Giovanni Pisano sculpted the Madonna and two candle-bearing angels on the altar. Giotto also produced a cruxifixion for the church, now held in the Eremitani Museum. 

Visiting the Scrovegni Chapel is quite a process. First, you have to book tickets online at least the day before, if you want to be sure of a spot. Then you have to get there half an hour in advance of your booked viewing time, and deposit your bag in a locker. Then you wait outside. At exactly the scheduled time, the doors open and everyone enters together, only to wait another fifteen minutes in an antechamber, so that the microclimate in the chapel can be stabilised again following the opening of the doors. During this time you watch a video about the frescoes in the chapel and their conservation. Then you finally get your allotted your precious fifteen minutes in the chapel. 

Palazzo della Ragione

After completing the process of visiting the chapel and the museum, I moved on to the Palazzo della Ragione, the impressive medieval market hall, town hall and palace of justice built between 1172 and 1219. The upper floor was dedicated to the  administration of the town and of justice, while the ground floor hosted, and still hosts, the historical covered market of Padua - a great place to grab some lunch!

Palazzo della Ragione

The great hall on the upper floor is one of the largest medieval halls still in existence. The rectangular hall measures 81.5 metres long and 27 metres wide, with a height of 24 metres; the walls are covered with allegorical frescoes, originally by Giotto, though these were tragically lost in the fire of 1420, after which they were repainted by Nicolo' Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara. The gigantic wooden horse on the western side of the hall was built in 1466 and is modelled on Donatello's equestrian statue of Gattamelata, which stands in front of the Saint Anthony's Basilica, and is unfortunately covered in scaffolding at the moment.

The building stands on arches, and the upper storey is flanked by an open loggia, not unlike that which surrounds the Basilica Palladiana in Vicenza, which was in fact inspired by Padova's Palazzo della Ragione.

The University of Padova 

While in the neighbourhood I decided to join a guided tour of the historic seat of the University of Padova, Palazzo Bo. Founded in 1222, the University of Padova is the second-oldest in Italy, after the University of Bologna, of which it was an offshoot. Its graduates include Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo Galilei taught and conducted research there for eighteen years, berween 1592 and 1610; the podium from which he gave his lectures is preserved outside the Aula Magna, as is his fifth vertebra (nabbed from his skeleton by an over-zealous student).

The Aula Magna where Galileo gave his lectures

...redecorated by Gio Ponti in the 1930s

The university's anatomical theatre, built in 1595, is the oldest in Europe, and drew artists and scientists to study the human body during public dissections. During the tour we had an opportunity to view it from below, i.e. from the point of view of the corpse being dissected 😬

On 25 June 1678, Venetian noblewoman and mathematician Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to graduate from university. A true genius, she enrolled in practically all the university's programmes of study at the time, as  well as studying seven languages. She wanted a degree in Theology, but the bishop of Padova wouldn't allow it, so she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy instead. Unfortunately,  she died of tuberculosis only six years after graduating.

Saint Anthony's Basilica 

Moving on from science to popular religion, my next stop was the Basilica of Saint Anthony, a place of pilgrimage for people from many different nations. For a very brief summary of the saint's life, see yesterday's post. The Basilica is of interest as a place of popular devotion, and is set up as a sort of pilgrimage journey in itself; once you complete the rounds of all the stations, you can go to a special office and get a certificate. But my pilgrimage journey doesn't end here; I am directed to Rome, and so I contented myself with the Basilica's stamp on my pilgrim credential. 

The mausoleum of the saint

In terms of artistic interest, it is much more interesting to visit the adjacent Oratorio di San Giorgio, built in 1377, with frescoes by Altichiero da Zevio.

After all this art I needed a break, so I crossed over to the Prato della Valle, a 90,000 square metre piazza encircled by water and by 78 statues of illustrious citizens of Padova. In the middle is a fountain, surrounded by grass and shade trees - the perfect place for an afternoon nap!

Thus refreshed, I summoned up the energy to visit the massive basilica of the Abbey of Santa Giustina, with its notable Corridor of the Martyrs.

No visit to any city is complete without going to the cathedral, and so I made this last stop on my tour of Padova.  The cathedral baptistery is covered with frescoes painted by Giusto de' Menabuoi in 1375-76. I visited this first, then went into the cathedral to obtain a stamp for my pilgrim credential. It's on a new page, and it will be the first stamp for my point of departure when I continue the Via Romea Germanica after the summer!

Caffè Pedrocchi

Cheers!

I finished off my busy day in Padova with a spritz at the historic Caffè Pedrocchi followed by an orchestra concert in the garden of Palazzo Zuckerman. Celebrating the successful conclusion of a 660 kilometre walk on the Via Romea Germanica! 

Via Romea Germanica Day 77: Piazzola di Brenta - Padova (Arcella)

Since for the great desire I had
To see fair Padua, nursery of arts,
I am arriv’d for fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy, [...]
Tell me thy mind; for I have Pisa left
And am to Padua come as he that leaves
A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep,
And with satiety seeks to quench his thirst.

- William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew, I, i

Another day following the river Brenta. Not always visible, but always there, on the other side of the trees or just over the fields. The Via Romea Germanica basically follows the Brenta cycling route, which follows the river, cutting across a few of the bends in its course. 

Again the route was mostly in the shade, and that and the breeze made it possible to walk despite the heat. In a couple of places the cycling route is closed due to construction work. At the first of these spots, just after crossing the bridge at Limena, I followed the recommended detour, posted on the spot in the form of a QR code that takes you to a Google Maps page showing the route; but the detour is designed for cyclists, not walkers, and took me onto a road with no shoulder. As soon as I found an alternative footpath I took it - but it brought me back onto the cycling route. I hoped I was past the point closed for construction, but it turned out it wasn't; I came up against an impenetrable barrier, with machines digging on the other side of it. I backtracked a little and found a footpath that led to the road, passing through private property, but obviously used by the locals to get around the construction site - the grass was well trodden down, and I met a man passing through. The gate leading out of the private property and onto the road was closed, but not locked, so I could open it and go through in order to walk around the closed section on the road.

Back on the cycling route, several kilometres later, at Pontevigodarzere I came to another "road closed" sign and another barrier - with pedestrians and cyclists ignoring it and going on through. I asked a local couple out walking, and they said it was possible to go through. So I continued on and in fact when I came to the actual construction site - this time there was no-one working there but it was well boarded up and blocked off - it was possible to take a brief detour around it, crossing the adjacent basketball courts and then walking around the perimeter of the construction site to access a footpath that passes below the railway bridge. I provide these details in case they could be useful to anyone currently walking the Via Romea Germanica route.

After crossing the Brenta on the road bridge at Pontevigodarzere, I was practically in the suburbs of Padova. The rest was urban walking, passing below the highway and then the motorway and into the outskirts of the city. I stopped in a small park to eat a hard-boiled egg and some fruit and decide what to do next: I couldn't get into my accommodation, on the northern side of Padova, until four, and it was only one-thirty. The hottest hours of the day! I didn't want to walk into the city centre with my backpack on, so I looked on Google Maps to see what there was in the area. Next to the stadium there's a sports centre with a public swimming pool! The perfect way to spend the hot afternoon hours. I turned off the Via Romea route at the stadium, purchased a pool admission and a bathing cap, wedged my backpack into a locker, and spent an hour happily splashing about. 

The smaller of the two outdoor pools

The adjacent Padova football stadium 

When a teenage boys' swimming team invaded the pool to start training, I decided I'd had enough and moved on to the poolside bar for a beer and a packet of crisps. Swimming is the perfect way to end a long day of walking in hot weather, and imagine, I had just been thinking, I really need to start doing some swimming when I get home, to develop some muscles in my arms to match the ones in my legs! 😆

Much refreshed by my time at the pool, I dressed in my rest clothes, packed away my wet swimming things along with my sweaty hiking things, and walked another two kilometres to my accommodation.  Casa di Accoglienza Terrani is one of three accommodations called "Casa a Colori", run by a non-profit social cooperative that provides training and job opportunities for people in difficult circumstances while at the same time offering low-cost accommodation options for visitors, students and temporary residents in the city. Basically a simple, low-cost hotel room, close to the train station and within walking distance of the city centre. The facility I'm staying at is right on the Via Romea Germanica route coming into Padova, next to the church and parish centre of Saint Anthony of Arcella, built on the spot where Saint Anthony of Padua died on June 13, 1231.

Saint Anthony of Padua 

Saint Anthony of Padua was not actually called Anthony, nor was he from Padua. Fernando Martins de Bulhões was a monk from Lisbon. 

Fernando joined the order of the Canons Regular at the age of fifteen, and went to Coimbra to study. He was deeply impressed by the simple lifestyle of a group of Franciscan friars who had settled outside the city; this was while Saint Francis was still alive, only eleven years after the founding of the Franciscan order, so it was quite a revolutionary move. Fernando joined the friars and took on the name Anthony, after Saint Anthony the Great of Egypt. Fernando/Anthony ended up in Italy only because his ship was blown off course when attempting to return to Portugal after a voyage to Morocco. His gift for preaching brought him to the attention of Saint Francis, who put him in charge of the instruction of new friars in 1224. 

Anthony had a real gift for preaching, and travelled around Provence and northern Italy giving his sermons. He was appointed Provincial Superior for northern Italy and chose Padua as his seat. 

In 1231 Anthony became ill with ergotism, a once common disease caused by eating rye contaminated with the fungus Claviceps purpurea; he died on June 13, 1231, at the age of 35. He was canonised less than a year after his death, in one of the most rapid canonisation processes in history; construction of the Basilica that holds his remains, commonly referred to in Padua simply as "Il Santo", began in 1232 and was completed in 1301. The church at Arcella, rebuilt in Neogothic style about a hundred years ago, encases the small building, a hospice run by the Poor Clares, sister order of the Franciscan friars, in which Saint Anthony died.

The church at Arcella

Casa Accoglienza Terrani 

Arcella was originally a separate village outside the city gates of Padova, though the name is now used to refer to the suburban district of Padova north of the train station. The district includes a large park, where residents hold a summer festival running from June through to the end of August, with events and food and drink stands among the trees. On the programme today was a yoga lesson at six-thirty, which I joined (minus yoga mat, practicing directly on the grass) before dining on a giant salad and a small ice cream. The perfect ending to the day!

Piazzola sul Brenta - Padova 22 km