The tomb of Antenore

Padua’s founder was thought to be a Trojan warrior

A medieval monument believed to house the remains of Antenore, the legendary founder of Padua, stands in Piazza Antenore, close to the University and other famous sights in the centre of the city.

The monument consists of a small Romanesque shrine with a roof, which was built in the 13th century by Lovato dei Loviti, a well-respected humanist and poet, to accommodate an ancient sarcophagus he thought contained what was left of the famous warrior.

This had followed the discovery by him in Padua in 1283 of a skeleton of a warrior inside a coffin in a stone sarcophagus along with a sword and some gold coins.

Loviti believed the remains to be those of Antenore, the Trojan hero credited with founding Padua by the poet Virgil in the Aeneid. He asked for the unearthed sarcophagus to be placed in front of his own house and composed verses in Latin to be inscribed on the stone.

The monument containing Antenore's stone sarcophagus

Antenore was depicted in Greek mythology as a traitor to the Trojans, which is why he had to leave Troy. According to Virgil he fled to Northern Italy and founded the ancient city of Patavium.

Loviti arranged for his own tomb to be placed alongside the monument to Antenore before he died in 1309. However, modern studies of Antenore’s remains have raised doubts about whether they actually belonged to Antenore. It is thought that they may have been the remains of a Hungarian warrior from the ninth century.

Also, some scholars have suggested that the claim Antenore founded Padua may have just been a poetic invention by Virgil.

Piazza Antenore did not exist until 1937, when the square was created after buildings near the monument were demolished to provide a better view of it. Antenore’s tomb is now in front of Palazzo Santo Stefano, which was built in 1811.

The piazza can be found just off Via San Francesco, which is a turning off Riviera Tito Livio, a busy thoroughfare, along which the tram runs between the railway station and the Basilica Sant’Antonio.

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