Padua

Tomb of Antenor

Padua claims to be among the oldest cities in northern Italy. According to a tradition dated at least to the time of Virgil's Aeneid and to Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, Padua was founded around 1183 BC by the Trojan prince Antenor.

After the Fall of Troy, Antenor led a group of Trojans and their Paphlagonian allies, the Eneti or Veneti, who lost their king Pylaemenes to settle the Euganean plain in Italy. Thus, when a large ancient stone sarcophagus was exhumed in the year 1274, officials of the medieval commune declared the remains within to be those of Antenor. An inscription by the native humanist scholar Lovato Lovati placed near the tomb reads:

This sepulchre excavated from marble contains the body of the noble Antenor who left his country, guided the Eneti and Trojans, banished the Euganeans and founded Padua.[6]

However, more recent tests suggest the sepulcher dates back to between the 4th and 3rd centuries BC. Nevertheless, archeological remains confirm an early date for the foundation of the center of the town to between the 11th and 10th centuries B.C. By the 5th century BC, Padua, rose on the banks of the river Brenta, which in the Roman era was called Medoacus Maior and probably until AD 589 followed the path of the present-day Bacchiglione (Retrone). Padua was one of the principal centers of the Veneti.

The Roman historian Livy records an attempted invasion by the Spartan king Cleonimos around 302 BC. The Spartans came up the river but were defeated by the Veneti in a naval battle and gave up the idea of conquest. Still, later, the Veneti of Padua successfully repulsed invasions by the Etruscans and Gauls. According to Livy and Silius Italicus, the Veneti, including those of Padua, formed an alliance with the Romans by 226 BC against their common enemies, first the Gauls and then the Carthaginians. Men from Padua fought and died beside the Romans at Cannae.

With Rome's northwards expansion, Padua was gradually assimilated into the Roman Republic. In 175 BC, Padua requested the aid of Rome in putting down a local civil war. In 91 BC, Padua, along with other cities of the Veneti, fought with Rome against the rebels in the Social War. Around 49 (or 45 or 43) BC, Padua was made a Roman municipium under the Lex Julia Municipalis and its citizens ascribed to the Roman tribe, Fabia. At that time the population of the city was perhaps 40,000.[7] The city was reputed for its excellent breed of horses and the wool of its sheep. In fact, the poet Martial remarks on the thickness of the tunics made there.[8] By the end of the first century BC, Padua seems to have been the wealthiest city in Italy outside of Rome.[9] The city became so powerful that it was reportedly able to raise two hundred thousand fighting men. However, despite its wealth, the city was also renowned for its simple manners and strict morality. This concern with morality is reflected in Livy's Roman History (XLIII.13.2) wherein he portrays Rome's rise to dominance as being founded upon her moral rectitude and discipline.[10] Still later, Pliny, referring to one of his Paduan protégés' Paduan grandmother, Sarrana Procula, lauds her as more upright and disciplined than any of her strict fellow citizens (Epist. i.xiv.6).[9] Padua also provided the Empire with notable intellectuals. Nearby Abano was the birthplace, and after many years spent in Rome, the death place of Livy, whose Latin was said by the critic Asinius Pollio to betray his Patavinitas (q.v. Quintilian, Inst. Or. viii.i.3).[11]

Padua was also the birthplace of Thrasea Paetus, Asconius Pedianus, and perhaps Valerius Flaccus.

Christianity was introduced in Padua and in most of the Veneto region by Saint Prosdocimus. He is venerated as the first bishop of the city. His deacon, the Jewish convert Daniel, is also a saintly patron of the city.[12]

The history of Padua during Late Antiquity follows the course of events common to most cities of north-eastern Italy. Padua suffered from the invasion of the Huns and was savagely sacked by Attila in 450. A number of years afterward, it fell under the control of the Gothic kings Odoacer and Theodoric the Great. It was reconquered for a short time by the Byzantine Empire in 540 during the Gothic War. However, depopulation from plague and war ensued. The city was again seized by the Goths under Totila, but was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narses only to fall under the control of the Lombards in 568. During these years, many Paduans sought safety in the countryside and especially in the nearby lagoons of what would become Venice. In 601, the city rose in revolt against Agilulf, the Lombard king who put the city under siege. After enduring a 12-year-long bloody siege, the Lombards stormed and burned the city. Many ancient artifacts and buildings were seriously damaged. The remains of an amphitheater (the Arena) and some bridge foundations are all that remain of Roman Padua today. The townspeople fled to the hills and later returned to eke out a living among the ruins; the ruling class abandoned the city for the Venetian Lagoon, 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 northern Italy.

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 the city of Padua.

The end of the early Middle Ages in Padua was marked by the sack of the city by the Magyars in 899. It was many years before Padua recovered from this ravage.

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 (Ghibelline) and not Roman (Guelph); and its bishops were, for the most part, of Germanic extraction.

Under the surface, several important movements were taking place that were to prove formative for the later development of Padua.

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.

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. The city grew in power and self-confidence and in 1138, the government was entrusted to two consuls.

The great families of Camposampiero, Este and Da Romano began to emerge and to divide the Paduan district among themselves. The citizens, in order to protect their liberties, were obliged to elect a podestà in 1178. Their choice first fell on one of the Este family.

A fire devastated Padua in 1174. This required the virtual rebuilding of the city.

The unfinished façade of Padua Cathedral

The temporary success of the Lombard League helped to strengthen the towns. However, their civic jealousy soon reduced them to weakness again. In 1214–1216, Padua was involved in a conflict with Venice, which it lost. In 1236 Frederick II found little difficulty in establishing his vicar Ezzelino III da Romano in Padua and the neighbouring cities, where he practised frightful cruelties on the inhabitants. Ezzelino was unseated in June 1256 without civilian bloodshed, thanks to Pope Alexander IV.

Padua then enjoyed a period of calm and prosperity: the basilica of the saint was begun; and the Paduans became masters of Vicenza. The University of Padua (the second university in Italy, after Bologna) was founded in 1222, and as it flourished in the 13th century, Padua outpaced Bologna, where no effort had been made to expand the revival of classical precedents beyond the field of jurisprudence, to become a center of early humanist researches,[13] with first-hand knowledge of Roman poets that was unrivalled in Italy or beyond the Alps.[14]

However, the advances of Padua in the 13th century finally brought the commune into conflict with Can Grande della Scala, lord of Verona. In 1311 Padua had to yield to the Scaligeri of Verona.

Jacopo da Carrara was elected lord (signore) of Padua in 1318, at that point the city was home to 40,000 people.[15] From then till 1405, nine members of the Carraresi family, including Ubertino, Jacopo II, and Francesco il Vecchio, succeeded one another as lords of the city, 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. The period of the signoria is covered down to 1358 in the chronicle of Guglielmo Cortusi.

The Carraresi period was a long period of restlessness, for the Carraresi were constantly at war. Under Carraresi rule the early humanist circles in the university were effectively disbanded: Albertino Mussato, the first modern poet laureate, died in exile at Chioggia in 1329, and the eventual heir of the Paduan tradition was the Tuscan Petrarch.[16]

In 1387 John Hawkwood won the Battle of Castagnaro for Padua, against Giovanni Ordelaffi, for Verona. The Carraresi period finally came to an end as the power of the Visconti and of Venice grew in importance.

Clock tower and Lion of St. Mark, symbol of the 'Most Serene Republic'

Padua came under the rule of the Republic of Venice in 1405, and mostly remained that way until the fall of the republic in 1797.

There was just a brief period when the city changed hands (in 1509) during the wars of the League of Cambrai. On 10 December 1508, representatives of the Papacy, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Ferdinand V of Castile concluded the League of Cambrai against the Republic. The agreement provided for the complete dismemberment of Venice's territory in Italy and for its partition among the signatories: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I of the House of Habsburg was to receive Padua in addition to Verona and other territories. In 1509 Padua was held for just a few weeks by Imperial supporters. Venetian troops quickly recovered it and successfully defended Padua during its siege by Imperial troops.

The city was governed by two Venetian nobles, a podestà for civil affairs and a captain for military affairs. Both of them were 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.

In 1797 the Venetian Republic came to an end with the Treaty of Campo Formio, and Padua, like much of the Veneto region, was ceded to the Habsburgs. In 1806 the city passed to the French puppet Kingdom of Italy until the fall of Napoleon, in 1814, when the city became part of the newly formed Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, part of the Austrian Empire.

Austrian rule was unpopular with progressive circles in northern Italy, but the feelings of the population (from the lower to the upper classes) towards the empire were mixed. In Padua, the year of revolutions of 1848 saw a student revolt which on 8 February turned the University and the Caffè Pedrocchi into battlegrounds in which students and ordinary Paduans fought side by side. The revolt was however short-lived, and there were no other episodes of unrest under the Austrian Empire (nor previously had there been any), as in Venice or in other parts of Italy; while opponents of Austria were forced into exile.

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 Königgrätz gave Italy the opportunity, as an ally of Prussia, to take Veneto, and Padua was also annexed to the recently formed Kingdom of Italy.

Annexed to Italy during 1866, Padua was at the centre of the poorest area of Northern Italy, as Veneto was until the 1960s. 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 like the University. The city hosted also a major military command and many regiments.

When Italy entered World War I on 24 May 1915, Padua was chosen as the main command of the Italian Army. The king, 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 battle of Caporetto in autumn 1917, the front line was situated on the river Piave. This was just 50–60 km (31–37 mi) from Padua, and the city was now in range of the Austrian artillery. However, the Italian military command did not withdraw. The city was bombed several times (about 100 civilian deaths). A memorable feat was Gabriele D'Annunzio's flight to Vienna from the nearby San Pelagio Castle air field.

A year later, the threat to Padua was removed. In late October 1918, the Italian Army won the decisive Battle of Vittorio Veneto, and the Austrian forces collapsed. The armistice was signed at Villa Giusti, Padua, on 3 November 1918.

During the war, the industry grew rapidly, and this provided Padua with a base for further post-war development. In the years immediately following World War I, Padua developed outside the historical town, enlarging and growing in population, even if labor and social strife were rampant at the time.

As in many other areas in Italy, Padua experienced great social turmoil in the years immediately following World War I. The city was shaken by strikes and clashes, factories and fields were subject to occupation, and war veterans struggled to re-enter civilian life. Many supported a new political way, fascism. As in other parts of Italy, the National Fascist Party in Padua soon came to be seen as the defender of property and order against revolution. The city was also the site of one of the largest fascist mass rallies, with some 300,000 people reportedly attending one speech by Benito Mussolini.

New buildings, in typical fascist architecture, sprang up in the city. Examples can be found today in the buildings surrounding Piazza Spalato (today Piazza Insurrezione), the railway station, the new part of City Hall, and part of the Bo Palace hosting the University.

Following Italy's defeat in the Second World War on 8 September 1943, Padua became part of the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state of the Nazi occupiers. 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, the Italian partisans, was very active against both the new fascist rule and the Nazis. One of the main leaders of the Resistenza in the area was the University vice-chancellor, Concetto Marchesi.

From December 1943 to the end of the war, Padua was bombed 24 times by Allied aircraft; the heaviest raids were the ones on 16 and 30 December 1943 (each of which caused 300 victims), 7 February 1944 (300 victims), 11 March 1944 (over 300 tons of bombs dropped by 111 bombers), 22 and 23 March 1944, 20 April 1944 (180 victims), 22 February and 12 March 1945.[17][18] The worst-hit areas were the railway station (the target of most raids) and the northern district of Arcella, where 96% of all buildings were destroyed; overall, 950 homes were destroyed and 1,400 damaged.[19] During one of these bombings, the Church of the Eremitani, with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, was destroyed, considered by some art historians to be Italy's biggest wartime cultural loss. The Cathedral and the University also suffered damage.[19] Some 2,000 inhabitants of Padua were killed by the raids.[17]

On 26 April 1945, the partisans started the final insurrection against the Germans and Fascists; in the subsequent fighting, 224 partisans and 497 Germans were killed. 5,000 German troops, including three generals, surrendered to the partisans in Padua, and another 10,000 in the surrounding area; on 28 April New Zealand troops (2nd New Zealand Division) of the British Eighth Army entered the city.[20][21] A small Commonwealth War Cemetery is located in the west part of the city, commemorating the sacrifice of these troops.

After the war, the city developed rapidly, reflecting Veneto's rise from being the poorest region in northern Italy to one of the richest and most economically active regions of modern Italy.

Padua experiences a humid subtropical climate (Köppen climate classification Cfa) characteristic of northern Italy, modified by the nearby Adriatic Sea.

In the community of Padua are numerous noble villas. These include:

• Villa Molin, in the Mandria fraction, designed by Vincenzo Scamozzi in 1597.
• Villa Mandriola, (17th century), at Albignasego
• Villa Pacchierotti-Trieste (17th century), at Limena
• Villa Cittadella-Vigodarzere (19th century), at Saonara
• Villa Selvatico da Porto (15th–18th century), at Vigonza
• Villa Loredan, at Sant'Urbano
• Villa Contarini, at Piazzola sul Brenta, built in 1546 by Palladio and enlarged in the following centuries, is the most important.

Padua's historic core, includes numerous churches of significant architecture and arts. These include:

• Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua. Built 1235.
• Santa Caterina d'Alessandria. Present by the 13th century.
• San Clemente. Built 1190.
• Santa Croce. Built 1737.
• San Daniele. Completed 1076.
• Church of the Eremitani. Built 1276.
• Sant'Andrea. Founded by the 12th century.
• San Francesco. Consecrated in 1430.
• San Gaetano Church. Built 1574– 1576.
• Abbey Church of Santa Giustina. The first church was built in 520, expanded in 1050.
• Basilica Cathedral of the Assumption of St. Mary, Padua Cathedral is the 4th structure on this site, built in 1551.
• Santa Maria dei Servi, dedicated in 1511.
• Scrovegni Chapel. Consecrated in 1305.
• Church of Saint Sofia, 10th century.
• Oratory of St George, built 1376–77

• 
  This tempera, Two Christians before the Judges, hangs in the city's Cathedral.
• 
  The apse area of Santa Sofia
• 
  The "Gran Guardia" loggia
• 
  Prato della Valle (detail)
• 
  Loggia Amulea, as seen from Prato della Valle
• 
  Torre degli Anziani, as seen from Piazza della Frutta
• 
  The Astronomical clock, as seen from Piazza dei Signori

By car, there are 2 motorways (autostrade in Italian): A4 Brescia-Padova, connecting it to Verona (then to Brenner Pass, Innsbruck and Bavaria) and Milan (then Switzerland, Turin and France); A4 Padova-Venezia, to Venice then Belluno (for Dolomites holiday resorts like Cortina) Trieste and Tarvisio (for Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Eastern Europe); A13 Bologna-Padova, to Ferrara and Bologna (then Central and South Italy). Roads connect Padua with all the large and small centers of the region. A motorway with more than 20 exits surrounds the city, connecting districts and the small towns of the surrounding region.

Padua has two railway stations open to passengers. The main station Stazione di Padova has 11 platforms and is sometimes incorrectly referred to as "Padova Centrale"; it is one of the biggest stations in Italy. More than 450 trains per day leave Padova. The station is used by over 20 million passengers per year. Other railway stations are Padova Ponte di Brenta (soon to be closed), Padova San Lazzaro (planned), Padova Campo di Marte, with no passenger service once used as a freight station which could become one of the stations of the "Servizio Ferroviario Metropolitano Regionale". From Padova, high speed trains connect to Milan, Rome, Bologna, Florence and Venice; one can reach Milan in 1h and 51 min, Rome in 3 hours an 0 min and Venice in 20 min. There are also international day trains to Zurich and Munich, and overnight sleeper services to Munich and Vienna (ÖBB).

The station was opened in 1842 when the service started on the first part of the Milan–Venice railway (the "Imperial Regia Ferrovia Ferdinandea") built from Padua to Marghera through Mestre. Porta Marghera is a major port of the Venetian area.

Railways enthusiasts can visit the Signal Box A (Cabina A), preserved by the "Società Veneta Ferrovie" (a society named after the former public works and railway company, based in "Piazza Eremitani" in Padua) association.

Padua is approximately 50 km (31 mi) away from Venice Marco Polo Airport which is the nearest airport with regular commercial service. Padua is also serviced by the Verona Villafranca Airport, Treviso Airport and Bologna Guglielmo Marconi Airport.

The Gino Allegri, or Aeroporto civile di Padova "Gino Allegri", is no longer served by regularly scheduled flights. Padua is, however, the home of one of Italy's four area control centres.

Street tram in Padua

Urban public transport includes public buses together with a new Translohr guided tramway (connecting Albignasego, in the south of Padua, with Pontevigodarzere in the north of the city, thanks to the new line built in 2009) and private taxis.

The city centre is partly closed to vehicles, except for residents and permitted vehicles. There are some car parks surrounding the district. In this area, as well, there are some streets and squares restricted to pedestrian and bicycle use only.

Padua has approximately 40 bus lines, which are served by new buses (purchased in 2008–9).

The Veneto Region is building a regional rail line (S-Bahn-like system) around the city with 15 new stations. Its name will be SFMR and it will reach the province of Venice.

The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Padova, Vicenza e Verona, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 46 min. 5% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 13 min, while 30% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 4.7 km, while 4% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.[31]

• Mario Mazzacurati (1903–1985), racing driver
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• Andrea Marcato (born 1983), rugby union player
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