The city of Padua is literally a 30-minute drive from Venice Marco Polo Airport and makes for an easy stop if starting one’s adventure from there. In our case, it felt a bit weird to arrive in Venice and not go into Venice for a visit. We were intending on maximizing our Northern Italy attractions, so we headed straight to Padua.
We arrived late in the afternoon but we’re happy to still have time to see most of the attractions we had on our list before continuing to Vicenza.
We feel that a full day would be more than enough to explore Padua. According to some, this small city in Northern Italy dates back to the 12th century BC. The city is home to an ancient Roman amphitheater and a medieval chapel. Both are located in the Giardini dell’Arena area.
One of the major squares on our list was the Prato dela Valle but the day we arrived the whole square was cordoned off for a bicycle race. This made for lots of traffic and many aggressive honking and hand waving drivers. An authentic Italian experience!
Basilica of St. Anthony
One of the most impressive sites here for us was the Basilica of St. Anthony next to Piazza del Santo. The Basilica houses St. Anthony’s tomb along with many relics. Even while rushing it took us over an hour to explore the many courtyards and admire the lavish interior. Be sure to visit the treasury where they had remnants of wood from the Cross of Jesus.
The high ceilings and ornate decorations throughout were beautiful. Heavenly and surprisingly big, you could probably spend hours marveling at each wall. We did that in some churches where we took a seat and just stared! This way you can literally scan the walls top to bottom and find beauty in the details. It’s impossible to soak it all in by just walking by.
One tip here is to park behind the church next to the piazza. Note the number in blue on the spot as you must enter that into the parking meter. Rates were very reasonable at about 1 euro an hour.
Scrovegni Chapel
Next, we drove out to the Scrovegni Chapel (Giardini dell’Arena) to see the famous frescos by Giotto. In retrospect it would have been easier and faster to walk from the Plaza del Santo than to navigate the traffic and look again for parking. In fact, we ran the last bit thinking the chapel would close at 7pm but luckily for us it was actually open until 8:20pm with a guided tour. Google isn’t always right and we made a note to improve the listing.
Visiting Scrovegni Chapel is done by going into a temperature-controlled room to watch an introductory video. This is a way to equalize the temperature to avoid further damaging the frescos from moisture or temperature differential.
Almost destroyed in WW2 the building has been under restoration and the frescoes were simply beautiful.
Conclusion
While we only had a few hours in Padua and really only got to visit these two sites, we would indeed recommend it for a stop on a Northern Italy adventure, and could suggest a few more attractions to make a day of it such as Padua’s Roman Arena or exploring the area around the Piazza dei Signori. There you will find the Clock Tower and other historic buildings.