Description
Palazzo del Bo, «il Bo» to everyone, has been the historic seat of the University of Padua since 1493, in the centre of the city. Inside you walk through five centuries of learning: Galileo's lectern, the oldest anatomical theatre in the world and three thousand students' coats of arms.
The Old Courtyard is the heart of the palace: a 16th-century double loggia in stone, laid out like a cloister. Walls and vaults are covered with painted and carved coats of arms, about three thousand across the whole palace, left by rectors, professors and students who came from many countries.
At the foot of the grand staircase up to the loggia stands the statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro, the Venetian noblewoman who here, in 1678, became the first woman in the world to earn a university degree. The statue was made for a monument in the Basilica of Saint Anthony and arrived here in 1773.
The Hall of the Forty keeps Galileo's lectern, a podium of wooden planks: the scientist taught here from 1592 to 1610. On the walls are forty famous students, William Harvey among them, painted in 1942 as symbolic figures rather than real portraits.
Next door open the Aula Magna, with the motto «Universa universis patavina libertas» and walls thick with coats of arms, and the Hall of Medicine, from which a small door leads to the Anatomical Theatre of 1594. In the same hall a case holds the skulls of seven professors who donated their bodies to science.
The name comes from an inn. In 1405 the lord of Padua gave these houses to a butcher who had kept the besieged city supplied with meat; he opened an inn here under the sign of an ox skull, the Hospitium Bovis. The ox is still the university's symbol.
In the 1930s the rector Carlo Anti called on Gio Ponti to redesign the new part of the palace. The result was the New Courtyard and the «Staircase of Knowledge», frescoed with the history of learning, at the top of which an old master murmurs «anchora imparo», «I am still learning».
The main door on Via VIII Febbraio, from 1922, was cast from the bronze of cannons captured in the First World War and bears the names of the students who fell in the war.
Don't miss
• Old Courtyard.
• Galileo's lectern.
• Statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro.
• Aula Magna.
• Anatomical Theatre.
Did you know?
Among the Bo's students were three popes: Benedict XI, Eugene IV and Sixtus IV.
In 1688 Venice banned new coats of arms: to make room for new, ever larger ones, the old ones were being destroyed.
The Old Courtyard is the heart of the palace: a 16th-century double loggia in stone, laid out like a cloister. Walls and vaults are covered with painted and carved coats of arms, about three thousand across the whole palace, left by rectors, professors and students who came from many countries.
At the foot of the grand staircase up to the loggia stands the statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro, the Venetian noblewoman who here, in 1678, became the first woman in the world to earn a university degree. The statue was made for a monument in the Basilica of Saint Anthony and arrived here in 1773.
The Hall of the Forty keeps Galileo's lectern, a podium of wooden planks: the scientist taught here from 1592 to 1610. On the walls are forty famous students, William Harvey among them, painted in 1942 as symbolic figures rather than real portraits.
Next door open the Aula Magna, with the motto «Universa universis patavina libertas» and walls thick with coats of arms, and the Hall of Medicine, from which a small door leads to the Anatomical Theatre of 1594. In the same hall a case holds the skulls of seven professors who donated their bodies to science.
The name comes from an inn. In 1405 the lord of Padua gave these houses to a butcher who had kept the besieged city supplied with meat; he opened an inn here under the sign of an ox skull, the Hospitium Bovis. The ox is still the university's symbol.
In the 1930s the rector Carlo Anti called on Gio Ponti to redesign the new part of the palace. The result was the New Courtyard and the «Staircase of Knowledge», frescoed with the history of learning, at the top of which an old master murmurs «anchora imparo», «I am still learning».
The main door on Via VIII Febbraio, from 1922, was cast from the bronze of cannons captured in the First World War and bears the names of the students who fell in the war.
Don't miss
• Old Courtyard.
• Galileo's lectern.
• Statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro.
• Aula Magna.
• Anatomical Theatre.
Did you know?
Among the Bo's students were three popes: Benedict XI, Eugene IV and Sixtus IV.
In 1688 Venice banned new coats of arms: to make room for new, ever larger ones, the old ones were being destroyed.