Padua and St. Anthony

Arriving in Padua feels like cutting a trip short. It's literally half an hour out of Venice, so most people don't even spend the night. They just treat Padua as a day trip. In fact, it may be better suited for one.

That didn't mean the hostel was empty though. Saturday night was a full house. I met a half Italian, half Canadian man who encouraged me to check out two additional places near Florence: Lucca and San Gigignano. If I have time, I may just do this.

Going back to Padua though, taking the tram into the city is a bit weird. There a lot of people gathered up in certain areas. There's the main square, the park and the basilica. Aside from these areas though, Padua seems like a very quiet place.

Padua is far from insignificant though. It's most famous of course for its saint who bears its name: St. Anthony of Padua. St. Anthony wasn't born in Padua, but in Lisbon. Padua is the city Anthony associated himself with though, and thus he is buried there. His basilica is a popular pilgrimage site because not only is his body buried there, but in the room with his relics, his uncorrupted tongue is in a reliquary!

The basilica of St. Anthony

The square of the saint

Padua was historically a place of learning, since it has one of the oldest universities in Italy. In fact Galileo Galilei himself taught here for a decade or so! I passed by the street where his house used to be. Unfortunately, the university was closed while I was there, since it was the weekend. I didn't get to see the room he taught in.

The street where Galileo once lived

Padua is also home to the world's oldest botanical garden. It's a world heritage site for being the first of its kind. It pales in comparison to botanical gardens of today, but back then it was the birth of studies like botany and pharmacy. It also supplemented the study of chemistry very much.

The Venus fly trap!

Just one fun gem in the city is a Foucault pendulum. It's a amazing simple device that was used historically to prove that the earth rotates on its own axis, as opposed to the sun revolving around the earth. It's here because Galileo proposed this but was not able to scientifically prove this. Foucault did eventually, and so a pendulum sits here.

The Foucault pendulum. 20 meter metal wire and 16kg iron ball