Padova

Our final full day of travel, Friday, 18 November, found us in the city of Padova, another of the major cities of the Veneto. Padova is yet another city which dates its roots back to at least the time of the Romans. It would have taken a spectacular day to eclipse the memories of our time in Venice the day before. Unfortunately, the fatigue of the fast pace as well as a number of unanticipated closures combined to create a somewhat diminished experience. Our first stop was the Cappella degli Scrovegni (Scrovegni Chapel), home to a cycle of frescoes by the artist Giotto. The Scrovegni Family were money lenders and the immense family fortune came about through the practice of usury. I find it interesting, and somewhat telling, that rather than simply stopping their usurious practice, they kept doing it and built a private church to atone for their sins instead. The exterior of the chapel is shown below. The chapel is sometimes referred to as the Arena Chapel since it is built on the site of the former Roman arena, some of which still survives.

Unfortunately, we arrived during the one week a year when they close the galleries and do routine maintanance and restoration work. That might have been good since the process of seeing the frescoes is quite a pain and involves sitting for 15 minutes in an airlock before entering the chapel to keep the inside and outside environments separate and aid in the preservation of the art.

Our second stop for the day was at the Basilica di Sant'Antonio da Padova. It was yet another, immense cathedral. I did enjoy this visit. We had been seeing a lot of mosaics, which were fantastic, but the inside of this church was done primarily in fresco. So many of the little churches you find in Italy are totally blank inside. At one time they were all done up with paintings and other decorations, but over time the frescoes have crumbled and not been restored, usually due to a combination of a lack of funding and a lack of artisans to perform the work. This was not the case in San Antonio. It was immaculately maintained and preserved and, as a result, I was able to get a real sense of what many of these churches must have been like in their prime. Pictures weren't allowed inside the church so I didn't take any although it seldom seems to stop the average person. We got to see St. Anthony's tongue, voicebox and jawbone, appropriate since he was an eloquent orator.

The third, and final, site of the day was the University of Padua. Founded in 1288 it is the second oldest university in Italy. The history of Padua is similar to that of the entire region. It traded hands between the Holy Roman Empire and various invading forces and even fell under the rule of dominant neighbors such as Verona. However, at one point in the 14th century, while its neighbors in Bologna were stagnating under a less enlightened rule, the university in Padua flourished as the top school in all of Europe. The university at Padua was quite progressive. Women did graduate. Lecturers were not paid by the university but instead were paid directly by the students who attended their lectures.

Of course, over time the university has expanded and been remodeled an reworked, one could hardly expect less. However, as in Bologna, some parts of the university have been preserved or recreated to be much as they were like hundreds of years ago. A subset of the entire school group made the pilgrimage to see the university. Our tour took us to see the anatomy theater. It was vastly different from the equivalent room in Bologna. This room was like a deep cave or small, steep, wooden amphitheater. Students lined the perimeter, standing on a series of balconies which were more than waist high and so shallow that you barely fit from front to back. From their vantage points everyone could see down into the center where the cadaver being worked on was located. Upwards of 200 people at a time could view these dissections, with lectures sometimes lasting for hours. The stench of the decaying bodies coupled with the heat of all those bodies pressed together meant that people would routinely faint. The balconies were intentionally designed so that when this happened the person could be safely left standing there until the lecture had concluded so as not to disturb the others in the class.

One of the more famous lecturers at the University was Galileo. The room where he gave his lectures still exists. Unfortunately (that word just keeps popping up), the room was in use for a conference and so I was thwarted in my quest to add a little science to my humanities sensory overload.