Padua

Tradition says Padua was founded by the Trojan prince Antenor, and archaeology places the first town between the 11th and 10th centuries BC, and it became one of the main centres of the Veneti. Allied with Rome by the 3rd century BC and made a Roman municipium in the 1st century BC, Patavium grew so rich on horses and wool that by the end of that century it seems to have been the wealthiest city in Italy outside Rome. The historian Livy was born at nearby Abano. Attila sacked the city in 450, and after a revolt in 601 the Lombards besieged it for twelve years before storming and burning it; little of Roman Padua survives beyond the arena and some bridge foundations.

The medieval commune rebuilt it. The university was founded in 1222, the basilica of the Santo was begun after Saint Anthony's death in 1231, and from 1318 the Carrara family ruled as lords. In 1405 Venice took the city and held it, apart from a few weeks in 1509, until 1797, ringing it with new walls between 1507 and 1544. Under Austrian rule, students and townspeople fought troops at the university and the Pedrocchi café in February 1848, and in 1866 Padua joined Italy.

In the First World War the city was the Italian army's headquarters, and the armistice with Austria-Hungary was signed at Villa Giusti in November 1918. Allied bombing in 1943–45 killed some 2,000 people, flattened the Arcella district and destroyed Mantegna's frescoes in the Eremitani. Since the war Padua has grown with the Veneto's rise to prosperity, and in 2021 its 14th-century fresco cycles became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The university shapes the city's identity. Galileo taught here and watched the moons of Jupiter through his telescope in 1610, Copernicus and William Harvey studied here, and in 1678 Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman in the world to receive a university degree. The anatomical theatre of the 1590s and the botanical garden of 1545 survive, and graduation is still a public event, with friends singing 'Dottore, dottore' to the new graduate.

The city is equally important in the history of art. Giotto, Donatello and Fra Filippo Lippi worked here, Mantegna trained in the local school of Francesco Squarcione, and Petrarch was a canon of the cathedral. Andrea Palladio was born in Padua, and the young Antonio Canova made his first works here. Shakespeare set most of The Taming of the Shrew in the city.

Religion remains visible: the Basilica of Saint Anthony, known simply as il Santo, draws pilgrims from all over the world, and the saint's feast on 13 June, with its procession through the centre, is the year's biggest day. Politically, the university has given Padua a more left-leaning character than the rest of the traditionally conservative Veneto. Sport is followed keenly — Calcio Padova plays football in Serie B, Petrarca Rugby has won 14 national championships, and the city's volleyball club plays in the top division.

About 208,000 people lived in Padua in 2026, making it the third-largest city of the Veneto, and the university's roughly 72,000 students give the centre a young population in term time. Some 20 per cent of residents are immigrants, the largest groups born in Romania, Moldova, Bangladesh, China and Morocco.

Padua is the economic hub of its area. The industrial zone laid out in the east of the city in 1946 is one of the largest in Europe, with the main offices of about 1,300 companies employing some 50,000 people, and declared incomes are well above the Italian average. The railway station, with more than 450 departures a day, makes the city a commuter base for Venice, Vicenza and Verona.

Most residents live outside the walls, in districts such as Arcella and San Carlo to the north, Guizza and Sant'Osvaldo to the south and the western suburbs. The day turns on the markets around the Palazzo della Ragione, which trade every weekday and on Saturday, and on the evening spritz in the piazzas. Since 2017 the city has been led by Sergio Giordani, an independent backed by the centre-left, and a guided tram line runs through the centre, with two more lines under construction.

Paduan cooking is built on fresh produce and peasant traditions. Its best-known dishes are bigoli, thick strands of pasta pressed through a bigolaro and originally made with buckwheat flour and now more often with wholewheat flour, sometimes with duck eggs; second courses based on the Padovana, an ancient local breed of hen known for its large crest; and the torta pazientina, a cake typical of the city, probably dating from the 17th century and regarded as Padua's own dessert. As elsewhere in the Veneto, rice and polenta appear more often than in much of Italy.

The markets are the centre of food life. The arcades under the Palazzo della Ragione, known as Sotto il Salone, house butchers, cheese sellers, fishmongers and fresh pasta makers, and the open squares on either side, Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta, sell fruit and vegetables every weekday and on Saturday. Tramezzini, small soft sandwiches with many fillings, are the usual light lunch in cafés.

Padua has a strong claim on the spritz. Aperol, the orange bitter apéritif, was first produced by the Barbieri company in Padua in 1919, and in the 1920s and 1930s the local spritz of wine and soda was combined with such bitters in Venice or Padua. Today the early-evening spritz in the market squares is a nightly ritual, and the historic Pedrocchi Café, once open day and night, still serves coffee and pastries in its 19th-century rooms.