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 di Sant’Antonio.

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Matteo Strukul – bestselling writer from Padua

Author has achieved worldwide fame

Matteo Strukul, born in Padua in 1973, is best
known for his novels about the Medici family

The novelist and journalist Matteo Strukul, whose work has now been published worldwide in many different languages, has just celebrated his 51st birthday. He was born in September 1973 in Padua and he set his first novel in his native region of the Veneto.

Strukul is best known for his four historical novels about the Medici family, which were set in Florence between the 15th and 17th centuries and followed the rise of the house of Medici. They all became best sellers in Italy and have sold more than 500,000 copies worldwide.

The first novel in the series, I Medici, una dinastia al potere, was awarded the Premio Bancarella in 2017. This prestigious award has been won in the past by Ernest Hemingway, Boris Pasternak, Umberto Eco, and Ken Follett. The novel was published in English in 2019 under the title Medici Ascendancy.

Matteo Strukul studied law at the University of Padua and went on to study for a PhD in European Contract Law at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Strukul’s debut novel was a dark thriller set in the Veneto, which was published in 2011 in Italian as La ballata di Mila. The novel was then translated into English and issued in 2014 under the title of The ballad of Mila. Strukul’s novels have now been translated into more than 20 different languages.

Strukul studied law at the University of Padua,
whose main building is the Palazzo Bo (above)

The author is also an adjunct professor of interactive storytelling at Link Campus University in Rome and writes in the cultural section of the weekly magazine Il venerdi di Repubblica.

His latest novel, La crypta di Venezia, was published in April this year (2024).

Strukul has also written Vlad, a comic book trilogy, for the publishers Feltrinelli, based on the historic character of Vlad the Impaler. This was the man who gave Bram Stoker the inspiration for the character of Count Dracula.

Matteo Strukul is the creator and founder of the literary movement Sugarpulp and artistic director of the festival of the same name.

On the Sugarpulp website he says his favourite wine is Raboso del Piave, which is said to be an austere wine with aromas reminiscent of morello cherry, wild blackberry and plum, but also cinnamon, leather, vanilla and pepper

The writer now lives between Padua, Milan, and Berlin.

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Andrea Moroni – architect

Talented designer contributed to the beauty of Padua

Padua's Basilica di Santa Giustina is one of
Andrea Moroni's best known works

Architect Andrea Moroni, who designed many stunning buildings in Padua and the Veneto region, died on 28 April 1560, 536 years ago today, in Padua.  

Moroni was the architect of some acclaimed Renaissance buildings but has tended to be overlooked by architectural historians because his career coincided with that of Andrea Palladio.

Moroni, who spent most of his working life in Padua, made a name for himself with the Benedictine Order and obtained commissions for two Benedictine churches in Padua, Santa Maria di Praglia and the more famous Santa Giustina.

His contract with Santa Giustina was renewed every ten years until his death and he settled down to live in Padua.

He was commissioned by the Venetian Government to build the Palazzo del Podestà, which is now known as Palazzo Moroni in Via VIII Febbraio, and is currently the seat of Padua city council. It is considered one of the most significant Renaissance buildings in the entire Veneto region.

Moroni was also involved in the construction of the Orto Botanico, Padua’s famous botanical gardens, where medicinal plants were grown, and he designed some of the university buildings.

The Orto Botanico, the world's first botanical
gardens, was designed by Moroni

It is known that he supervised the construction of Palazzo del Bo, the main university building in the city, but there is some controversy over who designed the palace’s beautiful internal courtyard. Famous names such as Sansovino and Palladio have been suggested, rather than Moroni, contributing to his talent tending to be overlooked over the centuries.

The Loggia of Palazzo Capitaniato and the 16th century Palazzetto are also attributed to him.

Born into a family of stonecutters, Moroni was the cousin and contemporary of Giovan Battista Moroni, the brilliant painter. They were both born in Albino, a comune to the north east of Bergamo in Lombardy. The architect has works attributed to him in Brescia, another city in Lombardy about 50 kilometres to the south east of Bergamo. He is known to have been in the city between 1527 and 1532, where he built a choir for the monastery of Santa Giulia.

He probably also designed the building in which the nuns could attend mass in the monastery of Santa Giulia and worked on the church of San Faustino before moving to live and work in Padua.

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The colourful life of Padua archaeologist Giovanni Battista Belzoni

The Great Belzoni’s powerful physique helped him remove Egyptian treasures

Giovanni Battista Belzoni during his
time as an archaeologist in Egypt

Among the many notable Italians to hail from Padua is the explorer and pioneer archaeologist of Egyptian antiquities, Giovanni Battista Belzoni, who was born in the city on 5 November, 1778, when it was part of the Republic of Venice.

Belzoni became famous for his height and strength and his discovery and removal to England of the seven-ton bust of Ramesses II.

Born into a poor family, at the age of 16 he went to find work in Rome and studied hydraulics. He was planning to take monastic vows but in 1798 French troops occupied the city and he moved to the Batavian Republic, now the Netherlands, where he earned his living as a barber.

He moved to England in 1803, allegedly to escape going to prison. He was six feet seven inches tall and had a powerful physique. For a while he earned his living as a circus strong man under the name The Great Belzoni.

He also exhibited his models of hydraulic engines and went to Cairo in 1815 to offer hydraulic engines for use in irrigation to Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of modern Egypt.

But two years later he embarked on another new career, excavating Egyptian tombs and temples for their treasures. It was said he damaged other less valuable objects in the process, which was later frowned upon.

It took 17 days for 130 men to tow the bust of
 Ramesses II to a boat bound for England

At Thebes he obtained the colossal sculpture of the head of Ramesses II for the British Museum. It took him 17 days and he had to use 130 men to help him tow it the river where it was loaded on to a boat bound for England. In the nearby Valley of the Tombs of Kings, he discovered the tomb of Seti I and removed the aragonite sarcophagus for the Sir John Soane Museum in London. This became known as Belzoni’s Tomb.

While he was in the process of removing an obelisk from the Nile island of Philae, it was taken from him at gunpoint by men working for the French.

He explored an island in the Nile, known as Elephantine, and the temple of Edfu. He also cleared the entrance to the great temple of Ramasses II at Abu Simbel. He was the first to penetrate the pyramid of  Khafre at Giza and he identified the ruins of the city of Berenice on the Red Sea.

Belzoni returned to England in 1819 and published an account of his adventure – Narratives of the Operations and Recent Discoveries Within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia. It was a two-volume work published in 1820.

The explorer and archaeologist died in 1823 at the age of 45 in Gwato, now called Ughoton, in Nigeria on his way to Timbuktu. In 1825 Belzoni’s widow exhibited his drawings and models of the Royal tombs of Thebes in London and Paris.

There is a road named after Belzoni - the Via Giambattista Belzoni - to the east of Padua's city centre.

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Church of the Eremitani frescoes

The day a major work of art was ruined by bombs

Mantegna's Stories of St James
was one of the works destroyed 

Padua was badly bombed by the Allies on this day in 1944 and the Church of the Eremitani was directly hit, causing devastating damage to the 15th century frescoes painted by Andrea Mantegna in one of the side chapels.

It was one of the worst losses suffered by Italy’s cultural heritage during World War II as Mantegna’s frescoes were considered a major work of art.

Mantegna, who was born in Isola di Cartura near Vicenza in 1431, was commissioned to paint a cycle of frescoes in the Ovetari Chapel, one of the side chapels, depicting scenes from the lives of Saint James and Saint Christopher. The commission marked the beginning of his artistic career when he started work at the age of 17 in 1448. He was in his mid 20s by the time he had finished the cycle in 1457.

Tragically, the German invading army had established their headquarters in Padua next to the Church of the Eremitani, which was why the chapel and the wonderful frescoes were so badly damaged.

They were reduced to more than 88,000 separate pieces and were found mixed in with plaster and bricks on the ground.

A detailed photographic survey of the work had been made previously and it was therefore possible later to reconstruct the artist’s work and recompose part of the cycle depicting the Martyrdom of Saint James. Other frescoes by Mantegna had been removed before the war to protect them from damp and they have also now been reinstated.

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

The Church of the Eremitani found itself
next door to a German army headquarters

La Chiesa degli Eremitani, or The Church of the Hermits, is a former Augustinian Gothic-style church close to the Cappella Scrovegni in Piazza Eremitani in the centre of Padua.

The church 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 single nave with plain walls decorated with ochre and red bricks and has a vaulted wooden ceiling. It houses the ornate tombs of two lords of Padua, Jacopo II da Carrara and Ubertino da Carrara, designed by Andriolo de Santi.

The 15th century side portal is also known as the Door of the Months because of the four panels by the sculptor Nicolo Baroncelli depicting allegories of the months.

The Musei Civici agli Eremitani (Civic Museum) of Padua is now housed in the former Augustinian monastery to the left of the church.

(Picture credit: Church of the Eremitani by Didier Descouens via Wikimedia Commons)

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Visit Este

The small town that inspired the poet Shelley

The historic town of Este in the province of Padua, with its varied and interesting architecture, is an excellent choice for a day trip from Padua as it takes under an hour by train and about 40 minutes by car.

You can walk into the centre of the town from the station in a few minutes, arriving in Piazza Maggiore, Este’s main square, in time for a drink before lunch.

The remains of the castle surrounded by gardens

Este is a wonderful example of ‘small town Italy’, with reasonably priced restaurants and bars, and plenty of things to see. It is unspoilt and relaxing to be there as it doesn’t get overcrowded with tourists.

To understand its 3000 year history, during which it has been ruled by Romans, Barbarians, important families during the medieval period, the Venetians, the French and the Austrians, you could not do much better than visit Este’s highly regarded Museo Nazionale Atestino. Right in the centre of the town, the museum is housed in Palazzo Mocenigo, a 16th century palace that incorporates part of the walls of the castle into its façade. There are said to be 65,000 items of historical significance in the museum’s collection.

Este’s castle was built in the 11th century by the Este family, who eventually moved on to Ferrara, where they built another, perhaps more famous, castle.

Este’s original castle was destroyed in the 14th century and then rebuilt by Ubertino da Carrara, Lord of Padova. He used it as a defensive outpost against the ruling families of Verona and Milan.

After Este and Padua were taken over by the Venetians, the castle was partially demolished and a wall and towers are all that remain today of the 14th century structure. Inside the walls, there is a beautiful garden, which is open to the public and is a lovely place to sit and rest, particularly when the rose garden is in full bloom.

Piazza Maggiore is in the centre of town

Este’s most important church, the Duomo of Santa Tecla, was erected in the 17th century on the site of an earlier church. It is well worth a visit, if only to see the large painting by Giambattista Tiepolo depicting Santa Tecla praying for the deliverance of Este from the plague.

While in Este you can also see the Villa Kunkler, which was rented by the English poet, Lord Byron, in the early years of the nineteenth century. He allowed his fellow poet and friend, Percy Shelley, to live there with his family between 1817 and 1818. Shelley was so inspired by the natural beauty of his surroundings he wrote some of his best poetry there, including Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills. Inspired by Este he wrote:

‘Of old forests echoing round

And the light and smell divine

Of all flowers that breathe and shine:

We may live so happy there,

That the Spirits of the Air

Envying us, may even entice

To our healing paradise

The polluting multitude:

But their rage would be subdu’d

By that clime divine and calm,

And the winds whose wings rain balm

On the uplifted soul, and leaves

Under which the bright sea heaves;’

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Orto Botanico in Padua

Botanical Garden inspired the German writer Goethe
 

The world’s first botanical garden created for educational purposes was opened in Padua in 1545.

Orto Botanico, which has now been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, was devoted to the growth of medicinal plants that could provide natural remedies for treating illnesses.

Orto Botanico in Padua was designed
 in accordance with Renaiisance ideals

The garden was designed for Padua University by Bergamo architect Andrea Moroni, who based it on a detailed architectonic plan in accordance with Renaissance ideals. It is laid out in the form of a circle enclosing a square, which was divided into four quadrants, in which the plants were grown.

The oldest and most important plants were grown in the hub of the garden, known as the hortus spahaericus.

These include a palm (Chamaerops humilis) planted in 1585, which became known as Goethe’s palm, because the German writer made a careful study of it in 1786 and drew from it his intuitions about evolution. He later published his ideas in an essay about the metamorphosis of plants.

The garden also has greenhouses, which were added at the beginning of the 19th century, and a library, where old scientific documents are preserved.

Padua’s Orto Botanico is still used for research into rare plants and threatened species, with a view to reintroducing them to their natural environment.

The garden is in Via Orto Botanico close to Prato della Valle, one of the city’s main squares, where there is a tram stop. It is open to the public every day, but has closed temporarily due to the Covid 19 pandemic.

 

 

Ippolito Nievo - writer and patriot from Padua

Risorgimento novel now seen as an overlooked classic

The writer Ippolito Nievo, a passionate supporter of the move to unify Italy in the 19th century, was born on this day in 1831 in Padua.

Nievo, whose posthumously published Confessions of an Italian is now considered the most important novel about the Risorgimento in Italian literature, drew inspiration from his participation in Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Spedizione dei Mille - the Expedition of the Thousand.

Ippolito Nievo fought for a united Italy

Nievo was born into comfortable circumstances.  His father was a prominent lawyer and magistrate in Padua and his mother the daughter of a Friulian countess.  Their home in Padua was the Palazzo Mocenigo Querini, a 16th century house overlooking Via Sant’Eufemia, close to the city centre.

They also had use of his mother’s ancestral home, a castle in Colloredo di Montalbano, a hamlet just outside the city of Udine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia, and of the Palazzo Nievo in Mantua.

From 1832 to 1837, when Nievo was a small child, they lived in a house adjoining the Palazzo della Giustizia in Soave, about 60km (37 miles) from Padua, where his father was posted as a judge. 

By the late 1840s, Nievo was becoming increasingly fascinated by the writings of Carlo Cattaneo and Giuseppe Mazzini, two of the central philosophical drivers of the Risorgimento.

He is thought to have taken part in a failed uprising in Mantua in 1848, a year marked by a series of insurrections inspired by Italian nationalists seeking to overthrow the Austian grip on the north of the country. 

He had been inspired by conversations with his maternal grandfather, Carlo Marin, who had been a prominent official of the Venetian Republic when it fell to the Austrians in 1797.

Nievo refused to follow his father into the law as he felt it would imply submission to the Austrian government and instead pursued a career in journalism.

In the 1850s he retreated to Colloredo di Montalbano, where he wrote a number of novels set in the Friulian countryside, as well as volumes of short stories and poetry.

Most important novel
about the Risorgimento

He began writing his major work, Confessions of an Italian, at some point in the mid-1850s. The central character is an 83-year-old man, Carlo Altoviti - thought to be based at least loosely on Carlo Marin - who has decided to write down the history of his long life, from an unhappy childhood to romantic entanglements during the siege of Genoa, and fighting in the cause of revolution in Naples.

Carlo’s twin passions are the dream of a unified, free Italy and his undying love for Pisana, the woman with whom he is obsessed. With characters ranging from drunken smugglers to saintly nuns and scheming priests, as well as real figures such as Napoleon and Lord Byron, it is an epic novel that tells the remarkable and inseparable stories of one man's life and the history of Italy's unification.

Nievo’s political activity intensified in the late 1850s, when he joined Garibaldi’s Cacciatori delle Alpi, a brigade of volunteers fighting to liberate Lombardy, and then participated in the Expedition of the Thousand, given the number 690 in the list of 1,000 patriots.

Nievo embarked from Genoa on 5 May, 1860 setting sail for Sicily. After distinguishing himself in the battle of Calatafimi and in Palermo, he was promoted to colonel and took on administrative assignments, at the same time keeping diaries that served as a chronicle of events.

It was in this role that he was tasked with bringing back from Sicily all the administrative documents and receipts from the expedition’s expenses. He boarded the steamship Ercole along with other members of the military administration to travel from Palermo to Naples, but during the night between March 4 and 5, 1861, the steamship ran into difficulties off the coast of Sorrento, almost within view of the Bay of Naples, and sank.  There were no survivors.

Nievo’s life is commemorated in a number of locations, including Colloredo di Montalbano and Fossalta di Portogruaro, in the Veneto, where the Castello di Fratta, the scene of Carlo Altoviti’s unhappy childhood, was thought to be located.

Colloredo di Monte Albano - known locally as Colloredo di Montalbano - is a small village in Friuli-Venezia Giulia situated about 14km (9 miles) northwest of Udine.  In the 11th century, it was a fief of the Viscounts of Mels, who had received it from the Counts of Tyrol. In 1420, together with all of Friuli, the hamlet was acquired by the Republic of Venice.  The hamlet was severely damaged by the Friuli earthquake in 1976, yet the family castle remains intact.

Nievo’s legacy is preserved in his novel, in which the central character and narrator shares Nievo’s passions. Nievo completed the work in 1858 but it was not until 1867, six years after his death, that it was published.

When Nievo’s supporters first found a publisher the book was titled Confessioni di un ottuagenario (Confessions of an octogenarian), because Nievo’s intended title was still deemed politically sensitive. It was changed later to reflect the author’s wishes.

Nievo died for the cause he believed in passionately, at the age of just 29.

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Andrea Palladio

The most admired architect of all time was born in Padua

Palladio became one of the most
influential architects in history

The world’s most famous and influential architect, Andrea Palladio, was baptised on 30 November in 1508 at the Oratorio di San Michele in Padua.

It is not known whether he was born on the 30th, or on the previous day.

Palladio’s style was to become so popular that architects all over the world designed villas and public buildings copying his interpretation of classical Roman architecture.

For example, the White House in Washington, the home of the President of the United States, built between 1792 and 1800, has many echoes of Palladian style.

Palladio was born Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, either just before, or on the day, of his baptism. He was the son of a miller in Padua.

He found work as a stone cutter in the workshop of a sculptor initially. but moved to Vicenza when he was 16, where he joined a guild of stonemasons and bricklayers. 

It was while working as a stonemason for the poet and scholar Gian Giorgio Trissino that his career began to gather pace. Trissino not only gave him the name Palladio, after the Greek goddess of wisdom, Pallas Athene, but encouraged and helped him to study classical architecture in Rome.

Palladio became fascinated with the work of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, architect and engineer of the 1st century BC. It was while in Rome that he came across the Pantheon, with its huge hemispheric dome inspired by Vitruvius, which was to influence many of his designs.

The Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese 

Trissino also introduced Palladio to a number of wealthy and influential families, including the Barbaro brothers, through whom he ultimately became chief architect of the Republic of Venice, having already occupied the equivalent position in Vicenza.

Palladio received his first commissions in the 1530s and thereafter was in constant demand, his style inspiring other architects outside Italy, at first in Europe and later around the world.  One factor in the spread of his fame was his publication in 1570 of his treatise, I Quattro Libri dell'Archittetura (The Four Books of Architecture), which set out rules others could follow.

Examples of Palladio's work can be found all over the region where he lived and in Venice, where he was commissioned to build, among other architectural masterpieces, the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, the focal point of the view across the lagoon from St Mark's Square through the Piazzetta.

He built a substantial number of villas for wealthy clients across the Veneto region, some of them lining the Brenta Canal that links the lagoon of Venice with Padua. Others such as the Villa Capra, otherwise known as La Rotonda, famous for its symmetrically square design with four six-columned porticoes, can be found in open countryside near Vicenza.

La Rotonda, near Vicenza, is one of 
Palladio's most famous buildings

Vicenza itself features many of Palladio's designs, including the fabulous Teatro Olimpico, in which perspective was used to create the optical illusion of city streets receding from the stage.  He was working on the theatre at the time of his death, after which the project was finished by his son, Silla, one of his five children, and Palladio's assistant, Vincenzo Scamozzi.

Palladio designed two beautiful villas in the province of Padua, Villa Cornaro in Piombino Dese and Villa Pisani in Montagnana.

One of his finest works is considered to be Villa Foscari, otherwise known as La Malcontenta, located next to the Brenta canal at Mira, which is between Padua and Venice.

Palladio died in 1580, aged 71. The cause of his death is not clear but some accounts say he collapsed while inspecting the construction of the Tempietto Barbaro, a church in Maser, near Treviso.

He was initially buried in a family vault in the church of Santa Corona in Vicenza, the city in which he spent most of his life, but was later re-interred at the civic cemetery, where a chapel was built in his honour.

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Francesco Zabarella

Cardinal from Padua helped end the western schism

Cardinal Francesco Zabarella, an expert on canon law whose writings on the subject were to remain the standard authority for centuries, was born on this day in 1360 in Padua.

Zabarella studied jurisprudence in Bologna and in Florence, graduating in 1385. He taught canon law in Florence until 1390 and in Padua until 1410. He took minor orders and in 1398 was made an archipriest of the Cathedral of Padua.

Zabarella also carried out diplomatic missions on behalf of Padua. In 1404 he was one of two ambassadors sent to visit King Charles VI of France to ask for his assistance against Venice, which was preparing to annex Padua. But when Padua became part of the Venetian Republic in 1406, Zabarella became a loyal supporter of Venice. In 1409 he took part in the Council of Pisa as councillor of the Venetian legate.

The antipope John XXIII appointed him Bishop of Florence and cardinal deacon of Santi Cosma and Damiano in Rome in 1411. There were two antipopes at the time as a result of the western schism, which had begun in 1378 when the French cardinals, claiming that the election of Pope Urban VI was invalid, had elected antipope Clement VII as a rival to the Roman pope. This had eventually led to two competing lines of antipopes, the Avignon line and the Pisan line, which had elected antipope Alexander V, John XXIII’s predecessor.

Although Zabarella never received major orders he was an active promoter of ecclesiastical reform. When the Council of Rome failed to end the schism, Zabarella was sent as one of John XXIII’s legates to Emperor Sigismund at Como to reach an understanding over the time and place for holding a new council.

Cardinal Zabarella's tomb in the Duomo

He helped to bring about the opening of the Council of Constance in 1414 in Germany.

In the interest of church unity he persuaded John XXIII to resign in 1415 but also opposed the Avignon antipope, Benedict XIII.

Eventually the Roman pope, Gregory XII, resigned and the Council of Constance formally deposed the Avignon line and the Pisan line.

Suffering poor health, Zabarella went to take the waters at a spa near Constance to try to recover. His last days were spent in pressing for the Council of Constance to elect a new pope as soon as possible. He died in Constance in September 1417 and was later buried in Padua Cathedral. 

By November, Pope Martin V, who had been born in the papal states near Rome, had been elected by the Council of Constance, effectively ending the western schism.

Zabarella’s most important works were: De schismate sui temporis, which dealt with ways and means of ending the schism, written between 1403 and 1408; Lectura super Clementinis, written in 1402; Commentaria in quinque libros Decretalium, written between 1396 and 1404.

Padua's Duomo and Battistero

Francesco Zabarella was laid to rest in the Basilica Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, referred to in Padua as the Duomo. The present Duomo is the third structure to have been built on the site. The first was erected in 313 and destroyed by an earthquake in the 12th century. The church was then rebuilt in Romanesque style and visitors to the Baptistery next door can see how the Duomo would have looked in the 14th century, Zabarella’s era, as it appears in the frescoes executed at that time by Giusto dè Menaboui.

The present building dates back to the 16th century and was finally consecrated in 1754, with its façade left unfinished.

Paolo De Poli

 Painter devoted his life to ancient art of enamelling

One of Italy’s most admired 20th century artists, Paolo De Poli, who became fascinated with the technique of enamelling, was born on this day in 1905 in Padua.

At first De Poli experimented with enamelling small, decorative objects but after he mastered his craft he moved on to creating large panels for the interiors of ships, hotels and public buildings.

Paolo De Poli

De Poli trained in drawing and embossing on metal at the art school Pietro Selvatico of Padua and then studied oil painting in Verona. He embarked on a career as a portrait and landscape painter.

In 1926 he participated in the XVth Biennale di Venezia with the oil painting, Still Life.

While travelling in the 1930s, he visited art museums and archaeological sites and became interested in the traditional art of working with vitreous enamel.From 1933 onwards, he devoted himself to creating enamel works on metal, experimenting with refined objects of many shapes in brilliant colours. He continued to improve his technique, reaching the highest level of skill.

In the 1940s, he collaborated with Milanese architect Gio Ponti in the production of furniture and decorative panels. This led to him producing animal statuettes in sculptural forms and he also produced beautiful vases, bowls, trays, plates, cups, plaques and door handles in enamel on copper.

He also accepted commissions for panels to decorate the homes of collectors in Italy and abroad.

Gio Ponti wrote about him: ‘If we can speak of an Italian art of enamel, it is thanks to De Poli, to the road he opened up and followed faithfully, to the example of his orthodox technique, to his sureness of touch, to the esteem and admiration he has won. And we should be grateful to him for this also.’

The main building of Padua University has works by De Poli

De Poli also dedicated himself to executing altarpieces and cycles of panels on the theme of the Stations of the Cross. These are preserved in churches in Padua, Abano Terme, Treviso and Bergamo.

His creations have been displayed at many international exhibitions and art fairs as expressions of Italian style. Many of his works in enamel on copper are now in the permanent collections of the important museums of decorative art and design.

De Poli was actively involved in the defence of the Italian cultural heritage and the promotion of arts and crafts during his career.

From 1960 to 1973 he served as a member of the board of directors of the Milan Triennale.

In 1970 De Poli was awarded the title of Cavaliere del Lavoro. He died in Padua in 1996, aged 91.

His personal archive of designs, prototypes, photographs and correspondence has been entrusted to the Archivio Progetti of IUAV University of Venice.

Visitors to Padua can see examples of his work in buildings in the city. Two of De Poli’s panels, depicting Podestà Rusca and Vescovo Giordano, are in Palazzo Bò, the main building of Padua University in Via 8 Febbraio. To find Palazzo Bò, leave Piazza Cavour, passing Caffe Pedrocchi on your right and walk down Via 8 Febbraio. The university building is on the left hand side of the street at its corner with Via San Francesco. De Poli’s statuette, Toro (Bull), completed in 1966, is in Padua’s Musei Civici, a complex of museums and historic sites centred round the former convent of the Eremitani in Piazza Eremitani.

Petrarch – Renaissance poet

Death of writer who inspired the modern Italian language

The poet Petrarch was born Francesco
Petrarca on July 19, 1374

Renaissance scholar and poet Francesco Petrarca died on this day in 1374 at Arquà near Padua.

Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, is considered to be an important figure in the history of Italian literature.

He is often credited with initiating the 14th century Renaissance, after his rediscovery of Cicero’s letters, and also with being the founder of Humanism.

In the 16th century, the Italian poet, Pietro Bembo, created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch’s works.

Petrarch was born in Arezzo in Tuscany in 1304. His father was a friend of the poet Dante Alighieri, but he insisted Petrarch studied law.

The poet was far more interested in writing and reading Latin literature and considered the time he studied law as wasted years.

Petrarch’s first major work, Africa, about the Roman general, Scipio Africanus, turned him into a celebrity. In 1341 he became the first poet laureate since ancient times and his sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe.

The town of Arquà Petrarca, near Padua, where the poet
Petrarch was born, and which took his name

Petrarch travelled widely throughout Italy and Europe during his life and once climbed Mount Ventoux near Vaucluse in France just for pleasure, writing about the experience afterwards.

Towards the end of his life he moved with his daughter, Francesca, and her family, to live in the small town of Arquà in the Euganean Hills to the south west of Padua. He died there on 19 July 1374, the day before his 70th birthday.

Arquà, in the province of Padua, where Petrarch spent his last few years, is considered to be one of the most beautiful, small towns in Italy and it has won awards for tourism and hospitality. In 1870 the town became known as Arquà Petrarca and the house where the poet lived is now a museum dedicated to him.


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Teatro Verdi Padua

Famous singers have graced stage of elegant theatre 

Padua has a beautiful 18th century theatre named after the composer Giuseppe Verdi, which is in Piazza Terrani off Corso Milano in the centre of the city, close to Piazza dei Signori.

Teatro Verdi presents operas, musicals, plays, ballets and concerts organised by the Teatro Stabile del Veneto.

Teatro Verdi is in Corso Milano in the centre of Padua

The theatre was originally named Teatro Nuovo after it was built in 1751. The architect, Giovanni Gloria, had been commissioned to design the theatre by a group of important citizens of Padua, who wanted something similar to the Teatro degli Obizzi, which had been built in the city in 1652 and was used to put on operas during the first half of the 18th century.

Among the celebrated singers who appeared at Teatro Nuovo were castrati singers Gaetano Guadagni and Gaspare Pacchierotti, soprano Giuditta Pasta and contralto Giuseppina Grassini

In 1846 the theatre was restored inside by Giuseppe Japelli and in 1884, when the theatre was dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi, the interior was changed again by architect Achille Sfondrini with Giacomo Casa decorating the ceiling.

During World War I the ceiling was badly damaged by bombing and had to be redone by Giuliano Tommasi.

In 1920, when Teatro Verdi was able to reopen, the King of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele III, attended the opening ceremony.

During World War II the number of productions had to be limited and after the war the theatre became the property of the local authority.

For more information about future productions, visit www.teatrostabileveneto.it/the-teatro-verdi/

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