Padova, Patavis
city · Veneto, Italy
1 place to see, the best preserved and best known first.
Photo: Mister No · CC BY 3.0 · Commons
bridge · Veneto
From the street, nothing: the river it crossed was filled in, and the bridge sits entirely below the modern road (OpenStreetMap; Turismo Padova, the city's tourism site).
The amphitheatre is the one thing to walk round. Its elliptical building measured about 134 by 97 m; what survives is roughly two-thirds of the middle wall of the ellipse, with its 2 m-wide arched openings, and some loose fragments, standing in the public gardens of the Giardini dell’Arena (ArcheoVeneto, University of Padua). The Scrovegni Chapel, with Giotto’s frescoes, stands on part of the same site (en.wikipedia).
Five Roman bridges are recorded in the town, and they are in very different states (en.wikipedia; Turismo Padova, the city’s tourism site):
The finds are in the Museo Eremitani on Piazza Eremitani, next to the gardens: the city museums describe floor mosaics, statues, grave goods and funerary monuments from the cemeteries outside the town (Padova Musei Civici).
Not for Roman Padua alone. The city’s own museums put it plainly: almost nothing of the ancient city is visible (Padova Musei Civici). Above ground the amphitheatre is a single ring of limestone wall rather than a standing arena, and the most interesting bridge is shut most of the year.
As part of a day in Padua, though, it is easy and mostly free. The amphitheatre, the Scrovegni Chapel and the Museo Eremitani share one address on Piazza Eremitani, and the chapel is entered through the museum (padovamusei.it), so anyone who comes for Giotto is already at the Roman wall; Ponte Molino is about 400 m away. A ticket for the Museo Eremitani is €11, or €15 with the Scrovegni Chapel.
Padua is on the Milan–Venice railway, 30 minutes from Venice by train (en.wikipedia). The historic centre is partly closed to cars, with car parks around it (en.wikipedia); the Emanuele Filiberto bus stops lie about 60 m from the centre point (OpenStreetMap). The stops are spread over about 1.5 km, from Ponte Molino in the north-west to Ponte Corvo in the south-east.
The Giardini dell’Arena are a public park with no ticket, entered during the park’s opening hours (ArcheoVeneto); the hours themselves are not published online. The Museo Eremitani, Piazza Eremitani 8, is open every day 09.00-19.00 except 1 May, 25-26 December and 1 January. A museums ticket (with Palazzo Zuckermann) is €11, reduced €9, €5 for young people and students; with the Scrovegni Chapel it is €15, reduced €11, plus €1 for the chapel’s compulsory booking (padovamusei.it, read 18 October 2026 - check before travelling, since prices move).
Ponte San Lorenzo opens on special occasions, for visits run by the volunteers of the FAI’s Padua delegation (Turismo Padova). The city museums also run a walking tour for school classes along the line of the Via Annia, from the Arena to Ponte San Lorenzo and Prato della Valle, only in March, April and May (Padova Musei Civici). A guided “Padua underground” tour, sold by the city’s tourism consortium, takes in the basement of the Palazzo della Ragione, with the mosaic floor of a Roman house of the late 1st or early 2nd century AD, and then the buried Ponte San Lorenzo (Regione del Veneto).
Before you go
Hours and prices checked 18 October 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.
Padua was one of the chief centres of the Veneti before Rome (en.wikipedia). By the late 3rd century BC its people were allied with Rome against the Gauls, and men from Patavium fought beside the Romans at Cannae; in 175 BC the town asked Rome for help against a civil war of its own (en.wikipedia). It became a Roman municipium in 49 BC in name and in 45 BC in substance, under the Lex Julia Municipalis (it.wikipedia). Under Augustus it was part of the tenth region of Italy, whose capital was Aquileia, and the Via Annia linked it to Aquileia (it.wikipedia; Pleiades).
The town grew rich on horse breeding and the export of wool (it.wikipedia); by the end of the 1st century BC it seems to have been the wealthiest city in Italy outside Rome (en.wikipedia). The historian Livy is recorded as a native of Patavium (Pleiades), though en.wikipedia places his birth at nearby Abano; Thrasea Paetus and Asconius Pedianus were born here (Pleiades). The city museums describe a town with a forum, a port, buildings for spectacles and covered markets (Padova Musei Civici).
The amphitheatre is dated to the reign of Augustus (ArcheoVeneto; Pleiades), although the city’s tourism site puts it around AD 70. It was identified in the 17th century and excavated in 1880-1881 and 1906-1907 (ArcheoVeneto). In the Middle Ages it was used as a quarry; the Scrovegni family later bought the site and built their palace and chapel on it (Turismo Padova). Remains of baths lie under the Palazzo Storione, and of the forum, around Piazza Garibaldi and Piazzetta Cavour, a single column survives (it.wikipedia).
The end came slowly. Attila’s Huns sacked the city in the mid-5th century; it passed to Odoacer and Theodoric, was retaken by the Eastern Empire during the Gothic War and fell to the Lombards in 568. In 601 it rose against the Lombard king Agilulf, and after a twelve-year siege the Lombards stormed and burned it (en.wikipedia).
Photo: Adert · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons
30 km · town house · Veneto
About 750 m² of excavation run under the cathedral nave, the sacristy and the crypt.
Straight-line distances.
Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.
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