You may think San Antonio is in Texas, but in Padova San Antonio is just another local boy done good. This wonderful old Italian city has many other claims to fame. Paintings by Giotto abound in its churches, they say they have the oldest university in Italy and a huge downtown piazza around a river, choc a bloc deep in hundreds of statues. Surely there are other contenders for these various crowns but Padova has been a player there in those Euganian hills for centuries.
In the old days their spas were full of Romans. Today, it seems to be mostly Germans! Fantastic brauts can be found there. It’s Italy, all its food is good, even its German food. One of the oldest coffee houses in Italy and, in fact, in Europe is here: Caffe’ Pedrocchi. Its university (incredibly from the 1200s), was one of the first to have women students, hundreds of years ago. This ancient Italian university was home to Galileo during one of his many flights from Florence – something to do with him irritating one of the many Flat Earth Popes. Those popes would all roll over in their marble tombs if they saw the ribald and very public hazing ceremonies at the university around graduation time these days. Oh my. Our second “Italian daughter” Alexia is from Padova and she and her sister both went to this university and survived the graduation.
FYI: This pleasant city’s name is also sometimes written “Padua” in English for some strange reason.
City Links:
http://www.emmeti.it/Welcome/Veneto/Padova/index.uk.html – good photo tour
http://www.virtourist.com/europe/padua/