Church of the Eremitani

Home of Andrea Mantegna’s famous frescoes

Padua's Chiesa degli Eremitani dates
back to the 13th century

Near the Giardino dell’Arena, where you can still see the remains of Padua’s Roman Ampitheatre, stands the Chiesa degli Eremitani, or Church of the Hermits, one of the most important churches in the city in the 14th century.

The Church of the Eremitani was built for Augustinian friars between 1260 and 1276 and dedicated to the Saints Philip and James. The friars remained in the church and adjoining monastery until 1806, when Padua was under Napoleonic rule and the order was suppressed. The Church was reopened for services in 1808 and became a parish church in 1817.

The church has a plain façade and a loggia with a circular rose window above it. Inside, it has a single nave with plain walls decorated with ochre and red bricks and a vaulted wooden ceiling.

It houses the ornate tombs of two lords of Padua, Jacopo II da Carrara and Ubertino da Carrara, which were designed by Andriolo de Santi. The Musei Civici agli Eremitani (Civic Museum) of Padua is now housed in the former Augustinian monastery to the left of the church.

In the Chapel of the Ovetari family, Andrea Mantegna began his artistic career at the age of 17. One of the heaviest losses to Italy’s cultural heritage during World War II occurred in 1944 in Padua when 15th century frescoes painted by Mantegna were blown into thousands of pieces by bombs.

The damage the church suffered in
the air raid was considerable

A raid on the city was carried out by the Allies, hoping to hit Padua’s railway station and a building where the occupying Germans had established their headquarters. But the bombs landed on Padua’s Church of the Eremitani instead, causing devastating damage to the beautiful frescoes created by the young Andrea Mantegna in one of the side chapels.

It was one of the worst blows inflicted on Italy’s art treasures during the war, as Mantegna’s frescoes, which had been painted directly on to the walls of the church, were considered a highly important work.

Andrea Mantegna, who was born near Vicenza in 1431, had been commissioned to paint a cycle of frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel, one of the side chapels in the Church of the Eremitani.

The commission marked the beginning of Mantegna’s artistic career when he started work at the age of 17 in 1448. The artist was in his mid-20s by the time he had finished the cycle in 1457, which showed scenes from the lives of Saint James and Saint Christopher.

Panels on the walls of the chapel
show how the frescoes looked

Tragically, the German invading army had established their headquarters in Padua next to the Church of the Eremitani. When the bombs fell in 1944, the chapel and the wonderful frescoes were severely damaged. They were reduced to more than 88,000 separate pieces, which were later found mixed in with bit of plaster and bricks on the ground.

Fortunately, a detailed photographic survey of the work had been made previously and it was possible later to reconstruct the artist’s designs and recompose part of the cycle depicting the Martyrdom of Saint James. 

Fragments that could be identified have been fixed to panels on the walls of the chapel where the frescoes were originally painted, which gives visitors some idea of how they looked before the church was bombed.

Other frescoes by Mantegna had been removed before the war to protect them from damp, and they remained undamaged and were eventually reinstated in the church.

In other chapels in the Church, 14th century frescoes painted by Guarentio and Giusto de’ Menabuoi miraculously survived.

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Padua’s Roman Arena

See what remains of the city of Patavium

Some remains of the Roman amphiteatre are
still visible in the Giardino dell'Arena

Padua is believed to be one of the oldest cities in northern Italy. It was founded in about 1183 BC by the Trojan prince, Antenor.

The Roman writer, Livy, records an attempted invasion of the city by the Spartans in 302 BC. Later attempts at invasions were made unsuccessfully by the Etruscans and Gauls. The city formed an alliance with Rome against their common enemies and it became a Roman municipium in about 49BC. By the end of the first century BC, Padua was the wealthiest city in Italy, apart from Rome.

The Roman name for Padua was Patavium. There isn’t much of Roman Patavium left now, but to get some idea of what it would have looked like, it is worth stopping off to see the remains of the Roman Amphitheatre, or Arena as it was known, which is in Padua’s Giardino dell’Arena, a beautiful public park.

If you leave the railway station, or bus station, and walk towards the city centre along the Corso del Popolo and Corso Garibaldi, you will pass the Giardino dell’Arena on the left-hand side where you will see the remains of one of the original elliptical walls of the Arena. It was probably built during the time of the Emperor Claudius, between about 60 and 70 AD.

The Scrovegni family built a chapel in
gardens, decorated by Giotto

An archaeological project to uncover the remains of the Arena began in 1881 and the area was cleared of weeds and a wall was demolished to provide a better view of what was still standing.

The main entrance would have been near the present-day Piazza Eremitani and on the opposite side would have been the porta libitensis, the door of the dead, through which the bodies of the dead gladiators would have been taken.

Within the elliptical wall, which originally had 80 arches, would have been a circle supported by a barrel vault on which the steps of the auditorium were arranged. Its style and dimensions are believed to have been similar to those of the Roman Arena in Verona.

In the 14th century the site was acquired by the Scrovegni family who had a chapel built on it in their name. They commissioned the artist, Giotto, to decorate it with his wonderful frescoes depicting events in the life of the Virgin May and Christ. Today these frescoes are considered to be some of the greatest works of art in the world.

The Arena is open for visitors to look round it every day from 7.00 am, but the site closes earlier in the winter than in the summer.

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