Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Padua is located west of Venice on the Bacchiglione River. It is the provincial capital of Padua. It is also the area’s commercial and communication powerhouse. Padua has a population of 214,000 people. The city, together with Venice and Treviso, is frequently included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, which has a population of over 2,600,000.
Padua is located on the Bacchiglione River, approximately 40 kilometers west of Venice and 29 kilometers southeast of Vicenza. The Brenta River, which used to run through the city, may still be found in the northern neighborhoods. The Venetian Plain serves as its agricultural setting. The Euganaean Hills, to the southwest of the city, have been lauded by Lucan and Martial, Petrarch, Ugo Foscolo, and Shelley.
Padua is known as “the city of the three without” because it is home to the ” The Prato della Valle, a former bog that has been turned into one of Europe’s largest squares, contains a café without doors and a meadow without grass “, and the “saint without a name” (because Paduans simply refer to Saint Anthony of Padua as “the Saint”).
History of the Padua
Antiquity
Padua claims to be one of northern Italy’s oldest cities. Padua was built approximately 1183 BC by the Trojan prince Antenor, according to a narrative that dates back to Virgil’s Aeneid and Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita.
Antenor led a party of Trojans and their Paphlagonian allies, the Eneti or Veneti, who had lost their king Pylaemenes, to occupy the Euganean plain in Italy after the fall of Troy. As a result, when a big antique stone coffin was excavated in 1274, authorities of the medieval town declared the remains within to be those of Antenor. An inscription beside the tomb by the native humanist scholar Lovato Lovati reads:
This catacomb exhumed from marble contains the body of the respectable Antenor who cleared out his nation, guided the Eneti and Trojans, expelled the Euganeans, and established Padua.
Late Antiquity
Padua’s Late Antiquity history followed the same pattern as that of other northern Italian towns. Padua was devastated by the Hun invasion and was destroyed by Attila in 450. It fell under the hands of the Gothic rulers Odoacer and Theodoric the Great a few years later. During the Gothic War in 540, the Byzantine Empire briefly reclaimed it.
The city was retaken by the Goths under Totila but was returned to the Eastern Empire by Narses only to fall under Lombard rule in 568. Many Paduans sought refuge in the countryside, particularly in the adjacent lagoons of what would become Venice, during these years.
In 601, the city rose up against the Lombard king Agilulf, who had been besieging it. The Lombards assaulted and burnt the city after a 12-year brutal siege. Many antique artifacts and structures were severely destroyed.
Frankish and Episcopal Supremacy
Walk of Friuli and the duchy, where Padua is found, was apportioned into four provinces at the Eating regimen of Aix-la-Chapelle (828), one of which accepted its name after the city of Padua. The sack of Padua by the Magyars in 899 signaled the end of the early Middle Ages in the city. Padua took several years to recover from this calamity.
Padua does not appear to have been particularly significant or active throughout the time of episcopal sovereignty over the towns of northern Italy. Throughout the battle of investitures, its basic attitude was Imperial (Ghibelline) rather than Roman (Guelph), and its bishops were mostly of Germanic origin.
The emergence of the Commune
Citizens developed a constitution at the beginning of the 11th century, consisting of a general council or legislative assembly and a credenza or administrative authority.
During the next century, they fought conflicts with Venice and Vicenza for control of the Bacchiglione and Brenta rivers. The city increased in strength and leadership and self-confidence and was delegated to two consuls in 1138.
The powerful families of Camposampiero, Este, and Da Romano began to emerge and seize control of the Paduan territory. To defend their freedoms, inhabitants were required to elect a podestà in 1178. Their first pick was a member of the Este family.
In 1174, a fire ravaged Padua. This necessitated the virtual reconstruction of
The emergence of the Signoria
In 1318, Jacopo da Carrara was chosen ruler (signore) of Padua, which had a population of 40,000 people at the time. Except for 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 Carraresi family, including Ubertino, Francesco il Vecchio, and Jacopo II, succeeded one another as lords of the city from then until 1405.
Guglielmo Cortusi’s chronicle covers the time of the signoria up to 1358.
The Carraresi period was filled with unrest because the Carraresi were continually at war. The university’s early humanist groups were essentially abolished during Carraresi’s rule:
The first modern poet laureate, Albertino Mussato, died in exile at Chioggia in 1329, and the Tuscan Petrarch became the Paduan tradition’s eventual heir.
Venetian rule
Padua fell under the control of the Republic of Venice in 1405 and remained so until the republic’s demise in 1797.
During the battles of the League of Cambrai, the city changed hands just briefly (in 1509). The Papacy, the Holy Roman Empire, France, and Ferdinand V of Castile signed the League of Cambrai against the Republic on December 10, 1508.
The pact called for Venice’s dominion in Italy to be completely dismembered and divided among the signatories, with Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of the House of Habsburg receiving Padua in addition to Verona and other provinces. Padua was only held by Imperial loyalists for a few weeks in 1509.
Austrian rule
In 1797 the Venetian Republic concluded with the Arrangement of Campo Formio, and Padua, like much of the Veneto locale, which was given to the Habsburgs, the city was given to the French model, the Kingdom of Italy, in 1806, until Napoleon died, in 1814, when the city got to be the portion of the recently shaped Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, the portion of the Austrian Domain.
The Austrian run of the show was disagreeable with dynamic circles in northern Italy, but the sentiments of the populace towards the realm were blended. In Padua, the year of transformations of 1848 saw an understudy revolt which on 8 February turned the College and the Caffè Pedrocchi into battlegrounds in which understudies and conventional Paduans battled side by side.
The revolt was be that as it may short-lived, and there were no other scenes of distress beneath the Austrian Domain (nor already had there been any), as in Venice or other parts of Italy; whereas rivals of Austria were constrained into banish.
Italian rule
Attached to Italy in 1866, Padua was in the middle of the poorest zone of Northern Italy, as Veneto was until the 1960s. Despite this, the city thrived within the taking after decades both financially and socially, creating its industry, being a vital agricultural market, and having an imperative social and mechanical middle just like the College. The city facilitated moreover a major military command and numerous regiments.
The 20th century
Padua was selected as the most important command of the Italian armed force on May 24, 1915, when Italy entered World War I. The lord, Vittorio Emanuele III, and the commander-in-chief, Cadorna, went to live in Padua for the period of the war. After the defeat of Italy in the fight of Caporetto in harvest time 1917, the front line was arranged on the waterway Piave.
This was fair 50–60 km from Padua, and the city was presented in the extent of the Austrian ordnance. In any case, the Italian military command did not pull back. The city was bombarded a few times A paramount accomplishment was Gabriele D’Annunzio’s flight to Vienna from the adjacent San Pelagio Castle discussion field.
A year afterward, the danger to Padua was evacuated. In late October 1918, the Italian Armed force won the unequivocal Fight against Vittorio Veneto, and the Austrian powers collapsed. The truce was marked at Estate Giusti, Padua, on 3 November 1918.
Amid the war, the industry developed quickly, and this gave Padua a base for encouraging post-war improvement. Within a long time promptly taken after World War I, Padua created the exterior of the chronicled town, broadening and developing the populace, indeed in case labor and social conflict were uncontrolled at the time.
Main sights of The Padua city
- The most famous landmark in Padua is the Scrovegni Chapel. It houses a series of frescoes that Giotto finished in 1305. It was built by wealthy banker Enrico degli Scrovegni as a private chapel that was once attached to the palazzo that belonged to his family.
- The great hall on the upper floor of the Palazzo della Ragione is said to have Europe’s largest roof without columns; The hall is nearly rectangular, measuring 81.5 meters in length, 27 meters in width, and 24 meters in height; Allegorical frescoes decorate the walls; the structure remains upon curves, and the upper story is encircled by an open loggia, similar to that which encompasses the basilica of Vicenza.
- The loggia known as the Gran Guardia can be found in the Piazza dei Signori, and nearby is the Palazzo del Capitanio, the home of the Venetian lead representatives, with its extraordinary entryway, crafted by Giovanni Maria Falconetto, the Veronese modeler stone carver who acquainted Renaissance engineering with Padua and who finished the entryway in 1532.
- Alvise Cornaro’s garden loggia, Padua’s first fully Renaissance structure, was designed by Falconetto. Close by stands the House of Prayer, redesigned in 1552 after a plan by Michelangelo. It includes works by Francesco Bassano, Giorgio Schiavone, and Nicol Semitecolo. The most significant cycle of Giusto de’ Menabuoi’s frescoes can be found in the Baptistry nearby, which was dedicated in 1281.
Main sights of The Padua city - The Teatro Verdi has exhibitions of musical dramas, musicals, plays, ballet productions, and concerts.
- The Basilica di Sant’Antonio da Padova, also known as “Il Santo” in the local dialect, is the Paduan church with the most acclaim. The bones of the holy person rest in a house of prayer luxuriously ornamented with cut marble, crafted by different craftsmen, among them Sansovino and Falconetto.
- The basilica was started around 1230 and finished in the next century. According to tradition, Nicola Pisano designed the building. Seven cupolas, two of which are pyramidal, cover it. Four cloisters are also present. There are eight C bells in the bell tower.
- On the square before the Basilica di Sant’Antonio da Padova is Donatello’s equestrian statue of the Venetian general Gattamelata (Erasmo da Narni). It was projected in 1453 and was the main standard-size equestrian bronze cast since relic. The equestrian sculpture of Marcus Aurelius on Rome’s Capitoline Hill served as a source of inspiration for it.
- Not a long way from the Gattamelata sculpture is the St. George Rhetoric (thirteenth 100 years), with frescoes by Altichiero, and the Scuola di S. Antonio (sixteenth 100 years), with frescoes by Tiziano (Titian).
Villas in the Padua
Locally in Padua are various respectable estates. These are some:
- Villa Molin, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi in 1597, in the Mandria fraction,
- Villa Loredan, at Sant’Urbano
- Villa Cittadella-Vigodarzere (19th century), at Saonara
- Villa Mandriola, (17th century), at Albignasego
- Villa Selvatico da Porto, at Vigonza (15th–18th century),
- Villa Pacchierotti-Trieste (17th century), at Limena
- Villa Contarini, at Piazzola sul Brenta, built-in 1546 by Palladio and enlarged in the following centuries, is the most important.
Churches in the Padua city
Numerous churches of significant architecture and artistic merit can be found in the historic core of Padua. These are some:
- Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua. Built 1235.
- Santa Caterina d’Alessandria. Present by the 13th century.
- San Clemente. Built 1190.
- Scrovegni Chapel. Consecrated in 1305.
- San Daniele. Completed 1076.
- Santa Croce. Built 1737.
- San Gaetano Church. Built 1574– 1576.
- Church of the Eremitani. Built 1276.
- Sant’Andrea. Founded in the 12th century.
- Church of Saint Sofia, 10th century.
- San Francesco. Consecrated in 1430.
- Abbey Church of Santa Giustina. In 520, the first church was built, and in 1050, it got bigger.
- Built-in 1551, Padua Cathedral, also known as the Basilica Cathedral of the Assumption of St. Mary, is the fourth building on this site.
- Santa Maria dei Servi, dedicated in 1511.
- Oratory of St George built 1376–77
Culture of people in the Padua city
Padua has for some time been acclaimed for its college, established in 1222.
The Riformatori dello Studio di Padova, a board of three patricians, was in charge of the university during Venice’s rule. Bembo, Sperone Speroni, Copernicus, Fallopius, the anatomist Vesalius Fabrizio d’Acquapendente, Galileo Galilei, Pietro Pomponazzi, William Harvey, Reginald, later Cardinal Pole, Scaliger, Tasso, and Jan Zamoyski are among the numerous notable professors and alumni.
It is also where Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to earn a university degree in 1678. The college has the most established life structures theater, worked in 1594.
The college too has the most seasoned botanical cultivation (1545) in the world. The botanical plant Orto Botanico di Padova was established as the plant of healing herbs joined to the University’s staff of medication. It still contains a vital collection of uncommon plants
Padua is nearly as significant in the history of learning as it is in the history of art. Numerous notable artists, including Donatello, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Giotto, were drawn to the university’s presence; Mantegna was created at the Francesco Squarcione School of native art.
Government in the Padua city
Since nearby government political reorganization in 1993, Padua has been represented by the City Board of Padua. Voters choose specifically 33 councilors and the Leader of Padua each five a long time. The current Chairman of Padua is Sergio Giordani (free, bolstered by the PD), chosen on 26 June 2017.
Consulates of Padua
Padua has offices in a few countries, counting those of Canada, Croatia, Ivory Coast, Peru, Poland, Switzerland, and Uruguay. A department for South Korea was arranged in 2014 and a department for Moldova was opened on 1 Admirable 2014.
The economy in the Padua city
In 1946, the industrial district of Padova was established in the eastern portion of the city. it is currently quite possibly the greatest modern zone in Europe, having an area of 11 million sqm. Here are the main offices of 1,300 businesses, which employ 50,000 people. In the modern zone, there are two rail route stations, one fluvial port, three truck terminals, two expressway exits, and a ton of associated administrations, like lodgings, mail depots, and directional focuses.