Padova

Where to stay in Padua

Some forty kilometres from Venice, Padua often lives in the shadow of its more famous neighbour, yet it holds two UNESCO listings and a university that has shaped its identity for eight centuries. It is a compact city, crossed on foot, with an irregular medieval fabric formed after the era of the free commune and the Carrara lordship.

Giotto and Padua urbs picta

In 2021 UNESCO inscribed a serial site made up of eight buildings in the old centre, all decorated with fourteenth-century painted cycles: the Scrovegni Chapel, the Eremitani church, the Palazzo della Ragione, the chapel of the Carrara palace, the cathedral baptistery, the basilica of the Saint, and the oratories of San Michele and San Giorgio. The most celebrated is the cycle Giotto frescoed between 1303 and 1305 for Enrico Scrovegni, son of a very wealthy usurer: those walls mark the beginning of a revolution in mural painting that would influence an entire century. Entry is capped and must be booked.

The university and the botanical garden

The university was founded in 1222, second in Europe only to Bologna, and the list of those who passed through says much: Galileo Galilei taught here for eighteen years, and in 1678 Elena Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman in the world to take a degree. In 1594 the first permanent anatomical theatre ever built was raised here, still visitable at Palazzo Bo. From 1545 dates the botanical garden, the world’s oldest university garden still on its original site and a UNESCO site since 1997: twenty-two thousand square metres with more than six thousand plants and the Goethe palm, planted in 1585.

The three squares and the Saint

The centre turns around Piazza delle Erbe, Piazza della Frutta and Piazza dei Signori, separated by the Palazzo della Ragione with its vast hanging hall. Nearby, the Prato della Valle is the largest square in Italy, with an elliptical island ringed by a canal and eighty-eight statues. The basilica of Saint Anthony, a destination for international pilgrimage, holds the saint’s remains, and before its forecourt stands Donatello’s equestrian monument to the Gattamelata.

Where to stay and what is nearby

Staying in the centre puts everything within walking distance; the university keeps the city alive out of season too, with prices generally below Venetian ones. Many choose Padua precisely as a base for visiting Venice, half an hour away by train. Nearby, the Euganean Hills combine volcanic relief with one of Europe’s oldest thermal basins, while the Riviera del Brenta strings the Venetian villas along the canal running to the lagoon. For more see where to stay in Padua; an overview is in where to stay in Veneto.