Words and photos Tom Weber
Featured image: The world’s first permanent anatomy theatre, built in 1594 at the University of Padua. Its innovative, tiered wooden galleries provided 200–300 attendees an unobstructed view of the dissection table below.
Bookended by the grandeur of Venice and the romance of Verona and serving as the backdrop for Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, from which this article takes its title, lies a city that rewards those who linger: Padua, or Padova (PAH-doh-vah) in Italian. Home to 210,000 bona fide padovani and 25 km of portico-covered walkways, Padua is often overlooked as a tourist destination in favour of its more famous Veneto neighbours, but it shouldn’t be. Within its postal code is an unbridled intellectual curiosity, grounded in the arts, education and culture.
Padua shines brightly throughout the world with its most important artistic landmark: the Scrovegni Chapel, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Inside this modest-looking sanctuary, a revolution in painting unfolds. Between 1303 and 1305, Giotto di Bondone covered the walls with luminous frescoes depicting the lives of Christ and the Blessed Virgin. The ceiling, a deep celestial blue scattered with golden stars, gives the illusion of an open window peering into Heaven. Visits are timed and climate-controlled to preserve the fragile works, which only heightens the sense of privilege when the doors close and the colours engulf the senses.
Like the Earth orbiting the Sun, the city’s intellectual life rotates around its venerable University of Padua. Founded in 1222, it’s the second oldest university in Italy. Galileo Galilei lectured here, challenging students to observe and criticise the natural world and to reach for the stars with open eyes and minds. The university’s UNESCO-recognised Botanical Garden has been providing much-needed research, in its original location, since 1545. And the historic Palazzo Bo houses an anatomical theatre, a steep wooden funnel where medical students gathered to witness the first European autopsies back in 1595; it’s an eerie yet fascinating footnote and testament to the city’s pioneering spirit. Even today, Padua feels youthful, animated by tens of thousands of university students and hopeful dottori (doctors).
The religious might of the city is the magnificent Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, named in honour of the Portuguese-born friar known simply around town as Il Santo (The Saint). Its skyline of domes and minaret-like bell towers rises above the city, blending Romanesque, Byzantine and Gothic influences into a silhouette beyond compare. Pilgrims have streamed here for centuries to venerate Saint Anthony – the patron saint of lost things – and the basilica’s interior glows with votive candles, marble reliefs and masterpieces by Renaissance sculptor Donatello.
The heartbeat of the city pulsates around Piazza dei Signori and its azure-blue, 15th-century clock tower. The ornate Palazzo della Ragione, the city’s town hall and UNESCO World Heritage Site for its interior frescoes, lies just across the way, with its ground-floor market stalls of fresh fish, meat, cheeses, breads and artisan wares open for business. Just outside, under sun-kissed canopies, are lively Piazza della Frutta and Piazza delle Erbe, where the locals shop daily for fresh fruit and veg.
In 19th-century Padua, few places were as politically charged or as symbolically important as Caffè Pedrocchi. Opened in 1831 by coffee entrepreneur Antonio Pedrocchi, the café, with two pairs of lions guarding the Doric-columned entryways leading to the Art Deco interior, quickly became more than a fashionable meeting place for a caffeine fix. Because it stayed open around the clock since its founding until 1916 – when the Great War hindered the importation of raw coffee beans – it earned the beloved nickname il caffè senza porte (the café without doors). This unique trait made it a true social hub where scholars, artists, writers and citizens could gather at any hour to debate, discuss and, dare we say, plot.
Daily life for the city camped along the banks of the Bacchiglione River unfolds in grand open spaces, like Prato della Valle. One of Europe’s largest squares, commissioned in 1775 by Mayor Andrea Memmo, the oval-shaped isle is surrounded by a canal and lined with 78 statues honouring some of the city’s favourite sons. On warm afternoons, families picnic on the grass while cyclists weave past and market stalls brim with produce, products, panini and ready-to-wear.
Food in Padua reflects the rich agricultural plains of the region. In traditional trattorias, you’ll find bigoli con l’anatra (thick strands of pasta in a duck sauce), creamy risotto and baccalà mantecato (creamed codfish) placed atop grilled polenta, a Veneto staple, or spread over toasted artisan bread. Prized local wines from the nearby Euganean Hills complement the cuisine, and a late-afternoon Aperol spritz, created by Padua’s own Luigi and Silvio Barbieri back in 1919, enjoyed in a sunlit piazza is obligatory.
In a country overflowing with masterpieces, Italy still holds places close to its breast that feel intimate and undiscovered. Padua is one of them. A city where Giotto changed the course of Western painting, where Galileo mapped the heavens and where daily life continues to unfold underneath classic fresco-domed ceilings and countless arcaded cobblestone streets, Padua remains quietly magnificent and entirely its own, a lingering nursery of the arts.
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