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PADUA - ITALY
The city of Padua (Lat. Patavium, It. Padova) is the economic and
communications hub of the Veneto region in northern Italy. The capital of
Padova province, it stands on the Bacchiglione river, 40km west of Venice
and 29km southeast of Vicenza, with a population of 211,985 (2004). It
agricultural setting is the Pianura Padovana, the "Paduan plain," edged by
the Euganaean Hills praised by Lucan and Martial, Petrarch and Ugo Foscolo.
The city is picturesque, with a dense network of arcaded streets opening
into large communal piazze, and many bridges crossing the various branches
of the Bacchiglione, which once surrounded the ancient walls like a moat .
Monuments of the historic center
The Palazzo della Ragione, with its great hall on the upper floor, is
reputed to have the largest roof unsupported by columns in Europe; the hall
is nearly rectangular, its length 815m, its breadth 27m, and its height 24m;
the walls are covered with allegorical frescoes; the building stands upon
arches, and the upper storey is surrounded by an open loggia, not unlike
that which surrounds the basilica of Vicenza. The Palazzo was begun in 1172
and finished in 1219; in 1306 Fra Giovanni, an Augustinian friar, covered
the whole with one roof; originally there were three roofs, spanning the
three chambers into which the hall was at first divided; the internal
partition walls remained till the fire of 1420, when the Venetian architects
who undertook the restoration removed them, throwing all three spaces into
one and forming the present great hall, the Salone. The new space was
refrescoed by Nicolo' Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara, working from 1425 to
1440.
In the Piazza dei Signori is the beautiful loggia called the Gran Guardia,
(1493 - 1526), and close by is the Palazzo del Capitanio, the residence of
the Venetian governors, with its great door, the work of Falconetto of
Verona, 1532.
The most famous of the Paduan churches is the basilica dedicated to Saint
Anthony of Padua, locally simply called "Il Santo." The bones of the saint
rest in a chapel richly ornamented with carved marbles, the work of various
artists, among them of Sansovino and Falconetto; the basilica was begun
about the year 1230 and completed in the following century; tradition says
that the building was designed by Nicola Pisano; it is covered by seven
cupolas, two of them pyramidal. On the piazza in front of the church is
Donatello's magnificent equestrian statue of "Gattamelata" ( Erasmo da Narni),
the Venetian general (1438-1441), which was cast in 1453, the first full-size
equestrian bronze cast since antiquity.
The Eremitani is an Augustinian church of the 13th century, distinguished as
containing the tombs of Jacopo (1324) and Ubertino (1345) da Carrara, lords
of Padua, and for the chapel of SS James and Christopher, formerly
illustrated by Mantegna's frescoes, largely destroyed in World War II. Now
the disused church houses the municipal art gallery. Close by the Eremitani
is the small church of the Annunziata, known as the Madonna dell'Arena,
containing the Scrovegni chapel, whose inner walls are entirely covered with
paintings by Giotto.
Padua has long been famous for its university, founded by Frederick II, Holy
Roman Emperor, in 1238. Under the rule of Venice the university was governed
by a board of three patricians, called the Riformatori dello Studio di
Padova. The list of professors and alumni is long and illustrious,
containing, among others, the names of Bembo, Sperone Speroni, the anatomist
Vesalius, Acquapendente, Galileo Galilei, Pomponazzi, Pole, Scaliger, Tasso
and Sobieski.
The place of Padua in the history of art is nearly as important as its place
in the history of learning. The presence of the university attracted many
distinguished artists, as Giotto, Fra Filippo Lippi and Donatello; and for
native art there was the school of Francesco Squarcione (1394-1474), whence
issued the great Mantegna (1431-1506).
The industry of Padua has greatly developed in modern times. Corn and saw
mills, distilleries, chemical factories, breweries, candle-works, ink-works,
foundries, agricultural machine and automobile works, have been established
and are flourishing. The trade of the district has grown to such an extent
that Padua has become the central market for the whole of Veneto.
History of Padua
Padua claims to be the oldest city in north Italy; the early medieval
commune justified itself by a fabled founder in the Trojan Antenor, whose
relics the commune recognized in a large stone sarcophagus exhumed in the
year 1274. The historical Padua inhabited by Veneti thrived thanks to its
excellent breed of horses and the wool of its sheep. Its men fought for the
Romans at Cannae, and the city (a Roman municipium since 45 BCE (query 43?))
became so powerful that it was reported able to raise two hundred thousand
fighting men. Abano nearby is the birthplace of the historian Livy, and
Padua was the native place of Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus and
Thrasea Paetus. Padua, in common with north-eastern Italy, suffered severely
from the invasion of the Huns under Attila (452). It then passed under the
Gothic kings Odoacer and Theodoric the Great, but during the Gothic War it
made submission to the Greeks in 540. The city was seized again by the Goths
under Totila, but was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narses in 568.
The history of Padua after Late Antiquity follows the course of events
common to most cities of north-eastern Italy.
Lombard Padua
Under the Lombards the city of Padua rose in revolt (601) against Agilulf,
the Lombard king, and after suffering a long and bloody siege was stormed
and burned by him. The Padua of Antiquity was annihilated: the remains of an
amphitheater (the Arena) and some bridge foundations are all that remain of
Roman Padua today. The simple people fled to the hills and returned to eke
out a living among the ruins; the ruling class abandoned the city for
Laguna, according to a chronicle. The city did not easily recover from this
blow, and Padua was still weak when the Franks succeeded the Lombards as
masters of north Italy.
Frankish Padua
At the Diet of Aix-la-Chapelle (828), the duchy and march of Friuli, in
which Padua lay, was divided into four counties, one of which took its title
from that city.
Rule of the bishops
During the period of episcopal supremacy over the cities of northern Italy
Padua does not appear to have been either very important or very active. The
general tendency of its policy throughout the war of investitures was
Imperial and not Roman; and its bishops were, for the most part, Germans.
Emergence of the commune
Under the surface two important movements were taking place. At the
beginning of the 11th century the citizens established a constitution,
composed of a general council or legislative assembly and a credenza or
executive body, and during the next century they were engaged in wars with
Venice and Vicenza for the right of water-way on the Bacchiglione and the
Brenta— so that, on the one hand, the city grew in power and self-reliance,
while, on the other, the great families of Camposampiero, D'Este and Da
Romano began to emerge and to divide the Paduan district among them. The
citizens, in order to protect their liberties, were obliged to elect a
podestà, and after a devastating fire in 1174 that required the virtual
rebuilding of the city, their choice fell first on one of the D'Este family.
The temporary success of the Lombard League helped to strengthen the towns;
but their ineradicable civic jealousy soon reduced them to weakness again,
so that in 1236 Frederick II found little difficulty in establishing his
tyrannical vicar Ezzelino da Romano in Padua and the neighbouring cities,
where he practised frightful cruelties on the inhabitants. When Ezzelino was
unseated in June 1256 without civilian bloodshed, thanks to Pope Alexander
IV, Padua enjoyed a period of rest and prosperity: the university
flourished; the basilica of the saint was begun; the Paduans became masters
of Vicenza. But this advance brought them into dangerous proximity to Can
Grande della Scala, lord of Verona, to whom they had to yield in 1311.
As a reward for freeing the city from the Scalas, Jacopo da Carrara was
elected lord of Padua in 1318 (query 1338?). From that date till 1405, with
the exception of two years (1388-1390) when Giangaleazzo Visconti held the
town, nine members of the enlightened Carrara family succeeded one another
as lords of the city. It was a long period of restlessness, for the
Carraresi were constantly at war; they were finally extinguished between the
growing power of the Visconti and of Venice. Padua prospered economically,
and the university (the second in Italy after Bologna, was founded in 1222,
making it one of the oldest universities in continuous operation. The center
of the university is founded around a rebuilt mediaeval inn of the "Bo" (the
Ox) , the mid-16th century Old Courtyard by Andrea Moroni. In the "Room of
the Forty" remains the chair of Galileo, who taught in Padua from 1592 to
1610; the Aula Magna, rich with coats of arms and decorations; The famous
Anatomy Theatre, where Vesalius taught through dissections, is the oldest in
the world (1594).
The botanical garden was founded in 1545 as the garden of curative herbs
attached to the University's faculty of medicine. It is the oldest botanical
garden in the world and still contains an important collection of rare
plants.
Under Venetian rule
Padua passed under Venetian rule in 1405, and so remained, with a brief
interval during the wars of the League of Cambray, till the fall of the
republic in 1797. The city was governed by two Venetian nobles, a podestà
for civil and a captain for military affairs; each of these was elected for
sixteen months. Under these governors the great and small councils continued
to discharge municipal business and to administer the Paduan law, contained
in the statutes of 1276 and 1362. The treasury was managed by two
chamberlains; and every five years the Paduans sent one of their nobles to
reside as nuncio in Venice, and to watch the interests of his native town.
Venice fortified Padua with new walls, built between 1513 and 1544, with a
series of monumental gates.
Under Austrian rule
After the fall of the Venetian republic the history of Padua follows the
history of Venice during the periods of French and Austrian supremacy. The
Austrians were unpopular with progressive circles in northern Italy. In
Padua, the year of revolutions of 1848 was a student revolt on February 8,
that transformed the University and the Caffè Pedrocchi into real
battlefields, in which students and ordinary Padovani fought side by side.
In 1866 the battle of Koniggratz gave Italy the opportunity to shake off the
last of the Austrian yoke, when Padua and the rest of the Veneto became part
of the united Kingdom of Italy .
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