Padua Capella and University

This morning we went to see important Padua sites that we didn’t have time to see yesterday. We started from Capella degli Scrovegni which is painted with incredible frescoes from 1300. It’s almost comparable with Sistine chapel, but considering that it was painted more than 200 years earlier, before the renaissance, it’s very mesmerizing. It’s located in a very non assuming brick building of a church.

We then went to the guided tour of the Padua university, which is the second oldest university in Italy and one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1222. Its is still very vibrant today, and we witnessed most of families celebrating their graduates, as today was the grad day for the law and medical schools. There was a beautiful lecture hall where Galileo used to teach, and the oldest anatomy theatre. After the university, we stopped by the stunning huge old palazzo, which has incredible enormous frescoes inside. All the walls are covered in magnificent highly detailed scenes. There is also an art installation by Yoko Ono of many wooden coffins with trees growing inside them. She learned that this hall used to be an execution hall for some time and wanted to commemorate various victims of oppression.

We left Padua and drove 45 min to Vicenza - the next under appreciated Italian town that we were going to explore. In the late afternoon I went to see an art museum in one of the palaces. It was very interesting to start really recognize names of some Italian artists.
I then went for dinner to an interesting inventive gastronomy small place. I had delicious baked pumpkin with smoked tofu and hazelnuts.Read more