Rachel's Adventures in Rome!: Playtime in Padova

We were going to spend three nights in Padova (Padua in English), the longest we would be in any one place on the trip. Right away when we got off the train, I could tell that Padova was a larger city than our two previous stops. To get to our hotel, we took a tram about ten minutes into the older part of the city. We were staying right across from a main pilgrimage site, the Basilica of Saint Anthony. The church was huge with Byzantine-style domes, making it a good landmark for finding our way (very important for someone with no sense of direction!). After checking into our hotel we headed out on our tour with our professor. To get to our first destination we walked along a canal, one of the few remaining in Padova. We started by visiting the Oratorio di San Michele which was a small family chapel once attached to a large family dwelling. The walls of the chapel were beautifully painted, depicting biblical scenes. There was one scene in particular that I liked because it gave a sense of the landscape and also depicted a Padovan hutlike dwelling which no longer exists. As you know from previous posts, I art which gives me a sense of place and space, and the chapel did just this. In addition it was interesting to get a sense for what a family chapel would have looked like. It was smaller, but no less beautifully ornamented than the basilicas we had been seeing. Our professors also talked to us about how a family chapel would probably be designed, at least in part, by the patron himself. Sort like a “make your own chapel” idea. Our next stop was the Palazzo della Ragione, a large civic government building off of one of the main town squares. We had seen civic government buildings in Perugia, and I was interested in the idea that space conveys a lot about power. By comparing the three government spaces in Perugia, we were able to see which faction was most powerful. In Padova, the palazzo was huge and the ceilings were higher than any I had seen in a non-church building. The walls were beautifully painted with images of animals, mythical creatures, and knights. I was very taken with this space, and spent a lot of time taking in the various images and sketching one particular white horse that I liked. Everywhere I turned there was a new image to look at, and I found them particularly beautiful. It was interesting to see a space filled with secular images after having been in so many churches. After leaving the palazzo, we walked past the Duomo piazza. We have been thinking a lot about the structure and organization of a medieval or renaissance city, and our professor pointed out to us that the piazza with the civic building was much busier and more crowded that the piazza with the Duomo. Observing this told us something about how this particular city functions. This brought us to the end of our first day in Padova. Several friends and I headed back to our hotel, and asked our concierge for a good non-touristy restaurant recommendation. He told us there was a place about three blocks away that he would recommend. We headed on our way, and found a lovely little pizzeria (they serve more than just pizza) with an Italian-only menu and Italian-only speaking waiters. It was perfect, and the menu was extensive! I ended up splitting calamari and gnocchi with a friend. Both were delicious.

The streets of Padova

It was a rainy day

A Padova canal

The city was full of these beautiful covered sidewalks

An interesting doorway

An "illegal" picture of the frescoes inside the Oratorio di San Michele

A tower outside the oratorio

Outside the Palazzo della Ragione

There was a car show going on!

Inside the Palazzo della Ragione--I found a giant horse!

Paintings on the walls

I spent some time sketching this horse

The next morning we woke up excited to see the famous Scrovegni Chapel, another family chapel painted from floor to ceiling by Giotto (We were not allowed to take any pictures, but this site http://www.tripadvisor.com/LocationPhotos-g187867-d269082-w3-Scrovegni_Chapel_Cappella_degli_Scrovegni-Padua_Province_of_Padua_Veneto.html has some good images if you haven't seen the chapel. It is considered to be one of the most important works of Western art.). The chapel was completed in 1305, and was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni. The Scrovegni family made its fortune through banking as money lenders, and because this is considered a sin, it is believed that Enrico built the chapel as penitence for his father’s sins and absolution for his own. Entering the chapel is a small ordeal because before you are allowed to enter, you must sit in a chamber for about ten minutes while they bring your body temperature and humidity to that of the chapel. While we were waiting we watched a short film about the history of the chapel. Finally we were able to enter the colorful space. The chapel was beautiful, but with only fifteen minutes, it was hard to take in all of the images. There were two more aspects of the chapel that I did focus on: The first was the color. The base color for the chapel was a rich royal blue, which was nicely complemented with the earth tones of the figures in the biblical narrative. Because the frescoes have been preserved in their entirety on all four walls, the space was an explosion of color. The second aspect was the emotion that Giotto was able to portray on his figures. The explanatory video had pointed to a fresco in which mourners were depicted with tears running down their cheeks. I was able to find this image, and it really looked like their tears would fall to the ground at any moment. This immediacy and emotion was depicted in images throughout the chapel, helping me to connect with images on an individual level as well as simply enjoying the chapel as a whole. Ultimately, I left the chapel impressed with Giotto's artistry and successful preservation of the space, but also feeling like I wasn’t as blown away as I should have been. After grabbing lunch at a fresh fruit and veggie market (I had fresh tomatoes and strawberries!), we visited the baptistery of the Padova cathedral. The baptistery is decorated with fourteenth frescoes with stories from the old and new testaments. Quite a few of the frescoes were covered with scaffolding, but there was still a lot to see. My favorite wall was covered with depictions of the apocalypse, including various sea monsters and the four horses of the apocalypse. I was very taken with these images, in part because they were so whimsical, and also because they were so different from anything we had seen depicted in frescoes thus far. Our final stop of the day was entering the grand Basilica of St. Anthony across from our hotel. I loved the Byzantine exterior, but inside the basilica was made up of many smaller chapels, most of which were more modern in nature. The Basilica of St. Anthony got me thinking about what it means for a city to possess relics, and the therefore become a pilgrimage site. We have heard stories during our travels of cities jealously guarding the relics of their patron saints, and walking through the reliquary section of St. Anthony’s I wondered why it is that people put so much value on glimpsing the body parts of a long deceased celebrity. A curious phenomenon. Staying in a hotel right across from the basilica gave me a better sense for what a pilgrimage site feels like, because it was clearly a hotel geared towards pilgrims on a spiritual journey. There were crucifixes in every room and one in the breakfast room, and plenty of brochures of religious sites in the city. In addition, the streets were lined with shops selling St. Anthony figurines, a special St. Anthony pastry, and candles to take as an offering to the church. It was all very interesting and gave me insight into another world. We had a free afternoon, so I headed to the botanical gardens with some friends. We wandered around among a beautiful collection of plants and flowers. Next, I headed to the neighborhood where the Jewish ghetto had been. Like in Ferrara, there was a plaque marking the old ghetto, and a memorial wreath marking Liberation Day. Because I have a personal interest in Jewish history, in all of these cities I am curious to see the Jewish neighborhoods to get a better feel for where a ghetto would have been and what it might have felt like. Here too there is still a synagogue, but nothing really open to that public that I could see. Yet it is interesting that there is still a Jewish presence, however small. That evening, a bunch of us headed to a huge park about a ten minute walk from our hotel. Here, there was an international festival of sorts happening. This meant that there were food stands (and chotchky stands too) offering cuisine from all over the world. This was a fun way to get dinner because we simply set a meeting time and then split up to pick and choose our meal from all over the world. Personally, I grabbed a giant hot pretzel and then a shwarma wrap since I have been missing Middle Eastern food. We sat in the park with our various choices, and enjoyed people-watching while eating. The park itself was quite beautiful with a shallow canal fountain all around the edge and bridges leading into the middle where there was yet another fountain. As the evening went on, the festival got busier and busier, and it felt like we were really experiencing local evening life as we watched the locals enjoy the festival as well.

A beautiful clock in one of the piazzas

Basilica di St. Antonio

St. Anthony's at night

The famous equestrian statue outside of St. Anthony's

The botanical gardens

Enjoying the botanical gardens

There were some pretty amazing flowers!

The song of the Navy also has a wreath in honor of Liberation Day

The park where the international festival was held

The international festival--I see France!

The more I got a feel for Padova, the more I liked it. It was a bigger city than the others that we had visited thus far on our excursion north, and so it had more to offer. Yet, I know a good city, of any size, when I see one--it has a bookstore or coffee shop on every corner. And Padova had plenty of those. On our last day in town, I stopped into a beautiful antique bookstore and drooled over the leather-bound, gold-embossed beauties. It’s probably a good thing that I don’t speak Italian, or I might have come home with a very expensive literary souvenir. I also felt like I got a good feel for the sections of the city, and the way that the modern was woven into the historical.

A Palladian Day!

Our last full day in Padova, we headed out by bus to see Palladian architecture. We had our same guide from Ferrara, and I had really enjoyed his tour of Ferrara, so I excited for an interesting day. Before this trip I hadn’t heard of Palladio, but he is one of the fathers of Western architecture and quite famous in the architecture world. His architectural treatise, The Four Books of Architecture, is still widely read. Palladio lived during the sixteenth, and built many summer villas for wealthy families. They were scattered along the countryside outside of Vicenza, the small town that we would visit later that day. We started at his Villa Rotunda, a round villa up on a hill. Palladio was strongly influenced by Roman (and Greek) architecture, and columns and Roman-style statues were featured prominently in this villa. Because this villa this villa was still privately owned, the inside was not open to the public, and we only walked around the outside. Next we headed into Vicenza, a beautiful little town, and we headed to the Palladio Museum, which had amazing models of his buildings and villas. There was also an interesting exhibit about Palladio’s influence on the architecture of the American South. We were supposed to have a picnic lunch, but it was pouring rain, so we took our picnic supplies and ate under the front eaves of a building in one of the town’s piazzas. It was a ton of fun to make sandwiches out of bread, cheese, salami, and tomato, and huddle together out of the rain. After lunch we set off to see Palladio’s Teatro Olimpico, which he built in the Roman style. There were three doors which actually led back into hallways which were decorated with doorways and and arches, and colored with a deep blue. The seating for the theater was in the half round. Sitting in the audience, the perspective that the theater offered was amazing. At the time that the theater was built, it would have been lit by candlelight and torches. It is hard to describe the theater, so be sure to take a look at the photos below. We hopped back on the bus and set off for Villa Emo, another of the countryside mansions. This villa had gorgeous land attached to it, and I imagined living there and keeping horses. We got to enter the villa and get a sense what the inside would have felt like. The ceilings were tall, and the rooms were very open. Because these would have been summer villa, and you would have wanted to keep them as cool as possible, the front and back doors lined up to allow for a cross breeze. While the painted walls were beautiful, they were also overwhelming in the reasonably tight spaces. I decided I prefer paintings because you can change them when you get bored, and they don’t dominate the space quite so drastically. Finally, we headed to our final villa of the day: Villa Barbaro. This villa was the strangest on the outside, with sun dials as part of the outer decoration. Down the driveway was the family’s chapel. It too was built with many Roman architectural features, including four columns flanking the entrance. Our tour guide called it the family’s own personal Pantheon because it was a Christian space with Roman architecture. Up the hill from the villa was the stable. There were no longer horses there, but it now housed an impressive collection of horse-drawn carriages. There carriages had been used for a variety of activities including taking a stroll through town, hunting, delivering mail, and for the military. Overall, we had a whirlwind day in which we got a good look at one man’s architectural vision for the world. While I wouldn’t necessarily commission Palladio to design my summer villa, I loved seeing these grand villas and theater and understanding the ways in which Palladio has influenced Western architectural styles.