This guide covers four places in the centre of Padua that tell the story of the city as a place of painting, law and learning: Giotto's frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, the cathedral with its frescoed baptistery, the great hall of the Palazzo della Ragione between the market squares, and MUSME, the museum of the history of medicine. They lie within a short walk of each other, between the old Roman arena and the university quarter.
Scrovegni Chapel
In 1300 the wealthy banker Enrico Scrovegni bought land on the site of Padua's Roman arena and built a chapel there as a family oratory and a place for his tomb. It was first consecrated on 25 March 1303 and definitively on 25 March 1305, and between those dates Giotto covered the whole interior, walls and vault, with frescoes. The main cycle tells the lives of the Virgin and of Christ in rows of scenes running around the walls, and it is one of the turning points of European painting: the figures have weight, faces show feeling, and the scenes take place in real space.
Enrico's father, Reginaldo, was a notorious moneylender, and Dante placed him among the usurers in the Inferno; but Dante wrote that canto a few years after the chapel was finished, so the old idea that the chapel was built to atone for him in reaction to Dante does not hold. In 2021 the chapel became part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Padua's 14th-century fresco cycles, which covers eight buildings in the city centre.
- The vault: a deep blue sky scattered with eight-pointed gold stars, standing for the eternal time of God.
- On the entrance wall, the Last Judgement, where Enrico Scrovegni kneels and offers the Virgin a model of the chapel, carried on the shoulders of a cleric.
- Along the bottom of the side walls, 14 figures of the Vices and Virtues painted in grey monochrome, the Vices on one side and the Virtues facing them.
Padua Cathedral
The cathedral, dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta, stands on a site that has held a church since the early Christian period; one medieval cathedral fell in the earthquake of 1117 and its successor was consecrated in 1180. The present Renaissance church was begun in 1551, when the canons approved a model for the presbytery by Michelangelo, though the work was carried out by Andrea da Valle and Agostino Righetto with many changes. Building went on for two centuries, and the church was consecrated only in 1754. Its facade, with three portals, was never completed.
The poet Petrarch was made a canon of the cathedral in 1349, through his friend Jacopo II da Carrara, lord of Padua, who wanted to keep him in the city. To the right of the church stands the 12th-century baptistery, which also served as the mausoleum of the Carrara family.
- Inside the baptistery, the frescoes by Giusto de' Menabuoi from 1375 to 1376, considered his finest work, covering the walls and the dome; they are part of the same UNESCO site as the Scrovegni Chapel.
- In the cathedral, the monument to Petrarch in the entrance vestibule and the Madonna dei Miracoli, an old icon long but wrongly attributed to Giotto.
Palazzo della Ragione
Between Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta stands the medieval town hall and law court of Padua, begun in 1172 and completed in 1219. In 1306 a friar named Giovanni replaced its three roofs with a single huge one, and after a fire in 1420 the inner walls were taken down, leaving a single vast hall: the Salone, about 81 metres long, 27 metres wide and 24 metres high.
The walls of the Salone were frescoed between 1425 and 1440 by Nicolò Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara, with a large astrological cycle partly based on the ideas of the medieval scholar Pietro d'Abano. Below, the ground floor has held the city's covered market for around 800 years, and the two squares outside still host a market.
- The giant wooden horse at the western end of the Salone, built in 1466 and modelled on Donatello's bronze Gattamelata near the Basilica of Saint Anthony.
- The Stone of Shame, a black stone seat in the corner of the hall where debtors who could not pay were publicly humiliated.
- Outside, the long loggias along both sides, which look over the stalls of the two market squares.
MUSME
The Museum of the History of Medicine opened on 5 June 2015 in the former hospital of San Francesco Grande, founded in 1414 by Sibilla de Cetto and her husband and for four centuries the main hospital of Padua, until it closed in 1798. It is a strongly interactive museum, part science centre and part collection: life-size video figures of the great doctors who taught at Padua introduce the rooms, with Andreas Vesalius on anatomy, Santorio Santorio on physiology, Giovanni Battista Morgagni on pathology and Prospero Alpini on therapy.
- A digital table where you can perform a virtual anatomical dissection.
- In a room shaped like the old anatomical theatre, a talking model of the human body eight metres long.
How to see them in one walk
Start with the Scrovegni Chapel, next to the Eremitani church; entry is in small timed groups, so book ahead. Walk south past Piazza Garibaldi and Piazza Cavour to Piazza dei Signori, then through the archway into Piazza del Duomo for the cathedral and the baptistery. Come back through Piazza dei Signori to the Palazzo della Ragione and the market squares of Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta. From there pass the university's Palazzo del Bo and follow Via San Francesco to MUSME, and if you still have energy, continue to the Basilica of Saint Anthony and Prato della Valle.
See Padua with World City Trail
Our Padua scavenger hunt turns the city centre into a game you play on your phone. The route links 10 stops, from Piazza Garibaldi to Prato della Valle, and the cathedral, the Palazzo della Ragione and MUSME are stops, along with Piazza Cavour, Piazza dei Signori, Piazza della Frutta, the University of Padua and the Basilica of Saint Anthony. The Scrovegni Chapel is not on the route, but it is a short walk from the first stop. At each stop you solve a puzzle and learn a story, at your own pace.
There is also a self-guided walking tour and an outdoor escape game in Padua, for people who prefer a different format.
Play the Padua scavenger hunt →
Take the self-guided walking tour of Padua →
Play the outdoor escape game in Padua →
Facts checked in October 2026.