What a Difference a Day or Two Makes

So after the snowstorm subsided, the sun came out yesterday and has continued melting all but a few spots of northern-exposure land and roof tops. At least with a March snow, we can count on its effects not lingering for long. So we are just about ready for Spring!

Here are the updated pictures of Padua's featured areas from Wednesday's entry, coming again from Wecam Padova - Webcam Meteo:

Basilica Sant'Antonio

Note: from this Padova Est photo, you might think we are in America due to the sheer quantity of traffic lanes. This demonstrates how much of a pole Padua is for commerce and industry, not to mention serving the residents. There's some serious traffic here, although the time of day doesn't reveal that here. Yesterday it took me 35 minutes to travel 2 miles within the city at lunchtime.

Writing on the Wall

WALL SPRAWL

I started with a walked along the Bastione Cornaro that parallels Via Gattamelata on the southern end of Padua. I noticed that the hospital structures seem to spring up out of the walls. In one case, the chapel shares a brick extension from the old wall into its foundation and its own external wall. How did this happen?

Well, the city decided to buy up the property immediately around and on top of the wall once its defensive features were no longer necessary, which became official in the nineteenth century. By the twentieth century, that city ownership led to many public or semi-public institutions constructing buildings in the wall's vicinity, where the terrain was free or very cheap. The hospital is a perfect example of this flurry of wall-construction and, supposedly, there are many schools that border it, as well.

Basically, public buildings grow like mushrooms around contemporary Padua's old fortress wall.

Tours on a Burchiello

With the warm season, new ways of exploring the city and region come available. Next to the monument, Memoria e Luce, dedicated to the September 11th tragedy, you can find this colorful boat. It offers tours through the city's waterways.

Yes, Padua has canals like Venice and Treviso. It used to have even more but many have been covered over to create roads. For example, about 20 years ago a road was named Riviera Tito Livio, near my place of work, recalling its origin as a water route. In the past, water was the best way to transport people and goods from city to city so even the inland city of Padua built a series of canals, mostly to connect it with Venice, which opens up to the lagoon and Adriatic Sea. But now cars and trucks seem to transport just about everything so roads are necessary and Padua's waterways are mostly explored by foreign tourists and local canoe clubs.

This particular boat, or burchiello, leaves from the Piòvego in the city centre, within a few minutes' walk to the train station.

There are several boat services of different shapes and sizes that take their guests through Padua, around Padua and along the Riviera Brenta to visit several important Venetian villas such as Villa Pisani, Villa Widmann, Barchessa Valmarana and Villa Malcontenta or from Padua toward Battaglia Terme to see the villas and waterfront of the Euganean Hills and Monselice. You can find trips for all tastes and price ranges, with time-frames ranging from one hour, half-day to full-day varieties. Here is a list of them:

www.padovanavigazione.it
www.deltatour.it
www.ilburchiello.it
www.battellidelbrenta.it
www.artemarstours.it


And if you decide to go a trip now with them, you might be able to take advantage of their low-season rates! (July and August heat seems to be a deterrent for some, but on the other hand, you won't have to worry about rain!)

Memoria e Luce

This monument, Memoria e Luce (Memory and Light), was inaugurated along Padua's Piovego river in 2007 as a symbol of friendship between Italy and USA and an appeal against violence in the world. It sits just a few steps away from the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua's most famous tourist destination, and the train station.

Designed by Daniel Libeskind, a finalist for Ground Zero's Freedom Tower area, it bears a twisted beam from the World Trade Center's South Tower, still with its original construction number visible after the destruction.

The Regione Veneto decided to place this project in Padua with the glass-and-metal "book" structure opening in the direction of the former WTC.

The monument can be accessed from the street at Via Giotto.

At night, sometimes the monument's illumination colors change in a nocturnal rainbow of memory and emotion.

For an Italian perspective of the monument, read an article from Il Sole 24 Ore:

http://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/SoleOnLine4/Speciali/2007/11settembre/memoria-e-luce.shtml?uuid=27c776a6-5fa2-11dc-b5d3-00000e251029

For as elegant as it is, I do not believe that the Paduans truly feel much of anything for this monument. It is a strange testimonial because it is primarily displays a tragic American problem that, although had some effects in Italy, did not directly hit this country. Italians do not personally know people who died in those towers. September 11, 2001 was a TV account and act of violence that shocked the world but was absorbed at a distance, just like most of World War II was a terrible event that Americans did not have to suffer much on their soil.

Did the politicians in Padua believe that their medium-small city would appear more important on a world-scale with this kind of "international" monument? Is it appropriate here? I am an American here and even question it sometimes.

Change of Seasons

The city landscape moves from rich greens in April to burnt browns in June as we move into summer.

View from Via Cornaro

Shrouded Santa Sofia

Another sighting of a monument gone covered.

This is now Santa Sofia, a church built primarily in the early 12th century in the Romanic style.

Of course, you can't see that just now.

How many months or years will this one take to restore? Give me your guesses.

The city lights up its past

Padua has started to artistically light some its best monumental features including the old walls, doors to the city and Roman arena. Here is a porta that faces south onto Via Bruno.