Padova (English: Padua, French: Padoue, Latin: Patavium) is a city in North Eastern Italy, and the capital of the province of the same name. It is located centrally in the Veneto region, between Venezia on one side and Vicenza and Verona on the other. The city itself has 210,821 inhabitants (2001), with about 350,000 inhabitants in the wider metropolitan area.
Get in
By train
Padova is a central railway node in the Veneto area. Many lines converge into the city central station, notably from:
All kinds of trains pass through Padova: Eurostar, InterCity, EuroCity, InterRegionale, Regionale, InterCityNight, EuroNight, Espresso. More info is available on the Trenitalia website .
By plane
Padova has its own airport for private planes, but with no direct commercial connections. However, three international airports are conveniently located nearby:
Other options further afield include:
By car
Padova is connected through the national highway network
Many national/regional roads originate in or pass through the city:
Get around
On foot
Discovering the city on foot is very easy. The historic center is not very big, so you can go around in the narrow streets.
By bicycle
Padova, luckily, is quite a flat city. Apart from the few roman bridges and some -not very steep- streets, you will not find any hills to hike! Especially in the city center, most of the streets are narrow and quiet and the terrain is sometimes made of pavé or cobblestones. In some areas, the cobbling is such that it would be unsuitable for standard road bicycles. Outside the narrow streets, a bike lane is sometimes available.
By tramway
APS Mobilità (ex-ACAP, call center: +39 049 20111) runs the only tramway line of the city, based on the rubber-tired TransLohr vehicle.
The line SIR1, entered service with passengers on March, 24th 2007.
The route is Stazione F.S. (Piazzale Stazione) - Trieste - Eremitani - Ponti Romani - Tito Livio - Santo - Prato della Valle - Cavalletto DX - Diaz - Santa Croce - Cavallotti - Bassanello - Sacchetti/Assunta - Cuoco - Guizza - Capolinea Sud.
This line is very useful for tourists because it stops near various monuments, museums and local landmarks like Santo Basilica, Eremitani Civic Museums, Cappella degli Scrovegni, Prato della Valle, Santa Giustina Basilica, Botanic Garden, central squares. (The stops for each of these are in bold above.)
The line is northbound-southbound, it will be substituting the popular line 8 bus, travel time 22 minutes. The tram runs, for the next two months, every 35 minutes from 6.55 till 18.35 from Monday to Saturday.
By bus
APS Mobilità (ex-ACAP, call center: +39 049 20111) runs a network of local transport that covers the main areas of the city as well as some suburbs.
Many lines run on the two main axes in the centre: North-South and East-West. Many of them terminate at the train station, which is also the main node of the bus network. The most frequent are lines 8, 10, and 3.
Fares:
By car
Getting around by car in the city center can be very difficult. During peak hours traffic jams are frequent. And if you want to see the city center, apart from the narrow streets and pedestrian zones, a traffic limited zone has been established from 8am till 8pm and cameras on several entrance points control the access: those who are not authorized will get a fine. It is useful to park your car in one of several parking lots or on the park areas on the streets, then take a bus or walk from there. More info can be found (in italian) on website.
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Padua, Italy, (Padova , Latin: Patavium, Padoa) is a city in the Veneto, northern Italy, the economic and communications hub of the region. The capital of Padova province, it stands on the Bacchiglione River, 40 km west of Venice and 29km southeast of Vicenza, with a population of 211,985 (2004). The city is included, with Venice (Italian Venezia), in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, population 1,600,000. Its agricultural setting is the Pianura Padovana, the "Paduan plain," edged by the Euganaean Hills praised by Lucan and Martial, Petrarch, Ugo Foscolo, and Shelley. 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.
Padua is the setting for most of the action in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.
Economy
Padua's industry has greatly developed in modern times. Corn and saw mills, distilleries, chemical factories, breweries, candle-works, ink-works, foundries, agricultural machine and automobile works, and in last years high-tech and nanotechnologies, have been established and are flourishing.
History
Antiquity
Padua claims to be the oldest city in north Italy, founded in 1183 b.C. by Trojan prince Antenor, leading the people of Eneti or Veneti from the Balcanic region to 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.
Patavium, as Padua was known by the Romans, was inhabited by (Adriatic) Veneti, who 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 BC (query 43?)) became so powerful that it was reported able to raise two hundred thousand fighting men. Abano, which is nearby, is the birthplace of the historian Livy, and Padua was the native place of Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus,Thrasea Paetus.
The area is said to have been Christianized by Saint Prosdocimus, who is venerated as the first bishop of the city.
Late Antiquity
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.
Under the Lombards the city of Padua rose in revolt (601) against Agilulf, the Lombard king, and after suffering a long (12 years) 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 and episcopal supremacy
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.
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.
The main event of the High Middle Ages was the sack of the city by the Magyars in 899. Padua subsequently needed many years to recover from that ravage.
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, 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 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.
Jacopo da Carrara was elected lord of Padua in 1318. and from that date till 1405, with the exception of a brief period of Scaligeri overlordship between 1328 and 1337 and two years (1388-1390) when Giangaleazzo Visconti held the town, nine members of the enlightened Carraresi family succeeded one another as lords of the city. In XIV century we have to notice the Battle of Castagnaro (1387), between Giovanni Ordelaffi, for Verona, and John Hawkwood, for Padova, who was the winner.
Carraresi period 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 third in Italy) 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 Orto Botanico di Padova 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.
Venetian rule
Padua passed under Venetian rule in 1405, and so remained; with a brief interval (sometime after 1509 Apr 15 to 1509 July 17) during the wars of the League of Cambray, when it was taken for just a few weeks by Imperial supporters, but immediately taken back by Venetian troops, then successfully defended during siege by Imperial troops in 1509; 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 1507 and 1544, with a series of monumental gates.
Austrian rule
In 1797 the Venetian Republic was wiped off the map by the Treaty of Campo Formio, and Padua was ceded to the Austrian Empire. After the fall of Napoleon, in 1814, the city became part of the Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia.
The Austrians were unpopular with progressive circles in northern Italy. In Padua, the year of revolutions of 1848 saw a student revolt which on February 8 turned the University and the Caffè Pedrocchi into battlegrounds in which students and ordinary Paduans fought side by side.
Under Austrian rule, Padua began its industrial development; one of the first Italian rail tracks, Padua-Venice, was built in 1845.
In 1866 the battle of Koniggratz gave Italy the opportunity to push the Austrians out of the old Venetian republic as Padua and the rest of the Veneto were annexed to the recently united Kingdom of Italy.
Italian rule
Annexed to Italy during 1866, Padua was at the centre of the poorest area of Northern Italy, as Veneto was until 1960ies. Despite this, the city flourished in the following decades both economically and socially, developing its industry, being an important agricultural market and having a very important cultural and technological centre as the University. The city hosted also a major military command and many regiments.
When Italy entered the Great War on 24th May 1915, Padua was chosen as the main command of the Italian Army. The King Vittorio Emanuele III himself and the commander in chief Cadorna went to live in Padua for the war period. After the defeat of Caporetto in Autumn 1917, the front line came on the river Piave, just 50-60km from the city, but the military command did not withdraw, while a new commander was appointed, Diaz; but the city was now in the range of Austrian bombers, and thus it was bombed several times (about 100 civilian deads). From the nearby San Pelagio Castle air field, Gabriele D'Annunzio flew on Vienna. In late October, the Italian Army won the decisive battle of Vittorio Veneto (exactly a year after Caporetto), and the Austrian forces collapsed. The armistice was signed in Padua, at Villa Giusti, on 3rd November 1918, with Austria-Hungary surrendering to Italy.
During the war, industry had a great development, development which continued in the following years. But social turmoil led to strikes, factories and fields occupations, clashes mainly by socialist then comunist activists, while war veterans struggled to come back in the civilian life, mainly supporting a new political way: Fascism. The fascist party soonly became the defender of property and order against revolution, as in other parts of Italy, and Mussolini was named Premier following the March on Rome, on 28th October 1922. The Fascist Era has now begun, even if the dictatorship began only in 1925. During this period, Padua developed outside the historical town, enlarging and growing in population. The city was also theatre of one of the largest fascist mass rallies, with 300,000 people come to listen to Mussolini speech. New buildings, in the tipycal fascist architecture, were made in the city, like the buildings surrounding Piazza Spalato (today Piazza Insurrezione), the train station, the new part of City Hall and a part of the Bo Palace hosting the University.
Italy entered the Second World War on 10th June 1940. Following Italian defeat on 8th September 1943, Padua became part of the Italian Social Republic, puppet state of the German occupier. The city hosted the Ministry of Public Instruction of the new state, as well as military and militia commands and a military airport. The Resistenza, Italian partisans, was very active against both the new fascist rule and the German invader, and one of the main leaders was the University vice-chancellor Concetto Marchesi. Padua was bombed several times by Allied planes, and the worst hit areas were the train station and the northern district of Arcella; during one of these bombings, the beautiful Eremitani church, with Mantegna frescoes, was destroyed. The city was finally liberated by partisans and British troops on 28th April 1945. A small Commonwealth War Cemetery is in the west part of the city, to remember the sacrifice of these troops.
After the war, the city developed to the city we know today, while Veneto passed from being one of the poorest to be one of the richest and most active regions of Italy. It counts today about 210,000 inhabitants, with a rising immigrants population (overall from Romania, Moldova, Morocco, Ukraine, Nigeria, China and Albania). The University has about 60,000 alumni, and it is among the largest of Italy; it was named as the best one since four consecutive years (then since 2003).
Main sights
In the neighbourhood of Padua are numerous noble villas. These include:
The most important is however Villa Contarini, at Piazzola sul Brenta, built in 1546 by Palladio and enlarged in the following centuries.
Culture
Padua has long been famous for its university, founded in 1222. 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, Copernicus, Fallopius, Fabrizio d'Acquapendente, Galileo Galilei, Pietro Pomponazzi, Reginald, later Cardinal Pole, Scaliger, Tasso and Sobieski. The university hosts the oldest anatomy theatre (built in 1594) and the oldest botanical garden (1545) in the world.
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, whence issued the great Mantegna.
Padua is also the birth place of the famous architect Andrea Palladio, whose XVIth century "ville" (country-houses) in the area of Padua, Venice, Vicenza and Treviso are among the most beautiful of Italy, and they were often copied during XVIIIth and XIXth centuries.
The famous sculptor Antonio Canova made his first work in Padua, one among the statues of Prato della Valle (now a copy stays at open air, while the original is in the Musei Civici, Civic Museums).
One the most relevant places in the life of the city has certainly been The Antonianum. Settled among Prato della Valle, the Saint Anthony church and the botanic Garden it has been built in 1897 by the Jesuit fathers, and kept alive until 2002. During WWII, under the lead of P.Messori Roncaglia SJ, it became the center of the resistance war against the Nazism. Indeed, it briefly survived P.Messori's death, and it was sold by the Jesuits in 2004. Some sites are trying to collect what can still be found of the college: (1) a no-profit pixel site is collecting links to whatever is available on the web; (2) a student association created in the college is still operating and connecting Alumni.
Demographics
The commerce and jobs attract many immigrants into the city. Many of the labourers are those of eastern European origin, and North African origin.
The racial makeup of the city is 94.5% Italian, 1.3% Romanian, 0.5% Albanian, and 0.5% Moldovan. Other ethnicities include very small numbers of Filipinos, Croats, Serbs, and Moroccans.
Sport
Padua is the home of Calcio Padova, a football team that plays in Italy's Serie C1 division, and who played 16 Serie A championships (last 2 in 1995 and 1996, but the previous 14 between 1929 and 1962); the Petrarca Padova rugby union team, winner of 11 national championships between 1970 and 1987; and a volleyball club, once called Petrarca Padova too, which plays in the Italian first division, and who won a CEV cup. Basketball, cycling, rowing, horse-riding and swimming are popular sports too.
The venues of these teams are: Stadio Euganeo for football and athletic, about 32,000 seats; Stadio Plebiscito for rugby union, about 9,000 seats; Palazzetto dello Sport San Lazzaro for volleyball and basketball, about 5,000 seats; Ippodromo Breda - Le Padovanelle for horse races. The old and glorious Stadio Appiani, which hosted up to 25,000 people, reduced to 10,000 ones for security reasons twenty years ago, and near to Prato della Valle in a central area, is almost abandoned and is to be restored. A small ice stadium for skating and hockey and a new 10,000 places venue for volleyball and basketball are to be built between 2007 and 2008.
Sister cities
See also
External links
