Giotto's masterpiece, Galileo's lectures, and the best spritz hour in the Veneto
Padua (Padova) is the Veneto's most underrated city — a university town of 200,000 just 40 minutes from Venice that contains two of Italy's greatest art treasures: Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel frescoes (1305, the birth of Western naturalistic painting) and the Basilica of Sant'Antonio, one of Christendom's most visited pilgrimage sites. Its medieval arcaded streets host the world's oldest botanical garden (1545) and a spritz-drinking culture as refined as any in northern Italy.
Padua's university, founded in 1222, became one of Europe's foremost centres of learning — Galileo taught here from 1592 to 1610, developing the telescope and his laws of motion while the Republic of Venice's protection gave him the freedom denied elsewhere. The city's golden age came under the Carrara dynasty (14th century), who commissioned Giotto and built the medieval walls and civic palaces that still define the centro storico. Venice absorbed Padua in 1405 and governed it for nearly four centuries.