Walking in Padua

Greetings from Padua, or as the Italians spell it, Padova.  It's the home of the University of Padua, which has been around for about 800 years, Galileo was a lecturer there.  Jim was not up for the trip into Venice today.  He has another cold on top of everything else.  It's just sad how badly he felt last night.  Today he was better so we walked into Padua.  This is an ancient wall we saw on the way in.

 

The old part of the city has a dense network of arcaded streets that open into piazzas.  There are college kids everywhere.

 

A church we went into.  I could not get a good exterior shot of it without standing in the street.

 

Absolutely gorgeous inside.

 

The amount of carved marble is just phenomenal.  It's everywhere.

 

We took a break from the walk and had a coffee and a nosh.  This gentleman was sitting off to our right.  It's 11:30 am, he's having an aperitif and a small bowl of potato chips.  Isn't he just perfect?  He was wearing a nice dress shirt, a perfectly tied scarf, slacks and boat shoes.  The elderly men in Padua look good.  We didn't see any microfiber anywhere.

This is a gate in the old part of town.  Beyond the gate is shopping; Prada and Louis Vuitton were represented on the square.

 

This is chalk.  An artist had small prints of great works of art and was reproducing them.  This one was phenomenal.  I could not get a good angle on it with the camera without standing on another one, so I didn't.

 

This is a tighter crop of the same piece.  Look at how well she has captured light on the sleeve.  I wish I could do that.

 

A street performer.  That's pretty clever, how he can levitate like that.

 

Real estate as seen from the Torricelle bridge.

 

 Here we are at the Plaza del Santo.   It's very large.  The fruit vendors were out in force.

 

Isn't that a cool building?  It fronts on the plaza, as well.

 

Eventually we found the Basilica of St. Anthony.  It's huge.

 

 

Photography is forbidden in the church.  I could not find that many interior shots on the web.  These are the few pictures I was able to sneak in without being busted by the monks.  Inside, the church just goes on forever.  There is an enormous area where people sit for services, and then on the perimeter there is another hall that circles the church, with other smaller chapels.  This is Mary and baby Jesus in one of the side chapels.

 

The Reliquary. Look at all the carved marble around the top of the walls.  They had the room fenced off so I could not get any closer.

 

Another chapel dedicated to praying.

 

The basilica holds the remains of St. Anthony.  People stand behind the structure that houses him, and place their hands on it and pray.  We've not seen that before.  The marble work behind his crypt is just amazing.  However, it was a high traffic area and I did not get pictures.  We had just arrived and I didn't want to get yelled at by the authorities.
We were seeing the sights for about four hours, Jim held up well.  Perhaps we'll get to Venice tomorrow.  We're staying an extra night on the off chance that we can still git'er done.