Corridor and Courtyard, Bo Palace, University of Padua

The visit to the academic apartment begins from the Rectorate Gallery. The fresco decoration with the representations of the cities at the time under Venetian rule, or culturally linked to the University of Padua, was carried out by Piero Fornasetti (in the period between 1942-1943) under the supervision of Gio Ponti. In 1956 Fulvio Pendini completed the decoration of the environment by adding, on the central pillars, the images of the students of Padua who became saints or blessed or who rose to the highest points of ecclesiastical career.

Coats of arms
One of the characteristic aspects of the Palace, which immediately strikes the visitor is the incredible number of coats of arms, painted and in relief that decorate not only the atrium and the loggias, but also many rooms and other rooms starting with the Aula Magna (see below ). The number of blazons, considered both those painted and those in relief reach the number of about 3,000. Just the degeneration of this custom led the Veneto governmentin 1688 to prohibit the placement of new coats of arms, given that to give space to the new ones (of huge dimensions) it was necessary to destroy the ancients, with the loss of the testimonies that were linked to them. A careful and accurate reordering of all the coats of arms was carried out between 1930 and 1940 by Antonio Brillo.

The coats of arms were initially painted, the universitas artistarum commissioned Francesco Falzapato first and then Dario Varotari (in 1581) to paint the coats of arms of the Rectors and Councilors. In 1590 it was established that the coats of arms had to be built in stone, although the custom of painting them remained.

The mention of the coats of arms is not only relevant from the artistic point of view, but leads to a reflection on a fundamental university component: the students. In fact, in this regard we have news that starting from very distant times all students who wanted to attend the University of Padua, excluding monks (if they were not bishops, abbots or priors) had to enroll in the register of freshmen (administered by the bidellus) and at the same time had to swear to obey the Rectors (students who were sons or brothers of Kings were exempt from the oath). The students were divided by nations, the number of which varied over the ages, each nation electing its own Councilor. The coats of arms, therefore, represent not only the Rectors and the Councilors but also the students from the various nations, and, obviously, also the professores (who in medieval times, like the Rectors, were chosen by the Students).

Famous student
In fact, it is enough to remember that among the students, besides numerous cardinals and bishops, three were also popes: Benedict XI, Eugene IV andSixtus IV (who not surprisingly granted with a bull to use the corpses for anatomy lessons, which led to the building, always inside Palazzo Bo, of the Anatomical Theater ).

The First Woman Graduated In The World
At the base of one of the two large stairways that lead to the upper porch of the Ancient Courtyard is the statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman graduated in the world, who in 1678 obtained a degree in philosophy from the University of Padua.

Medicine Classroom
One of the most beautiful and among the oldest academic rooms in the building is the classroom which today hosts the discussions of the thesis of medical students and other faculties. It is the ancient classroom where theoretical anatomy lessons were held, but its origins are more remote, in fact the perfectly preserved wooden coffered ceiling, and the typically medieval frieze that decorates the walls, remind that the room was an integral part of one of the three noble houses of the Da Carrara family, which constituted the fourteenth-century nucleus on which the Locanda del Bo was built.

Atrium of the heroes
The Gallery serves as a link between the new and ancient part of the Bo. The Gallery is accessed through a monumental staircase located in the atrium of the main entrance of the Palace. Access is possible from via VIII Febbraio, through a monumental bronze door, made in 1922 with the bronze of the cannons captured during the First World War and with the name of the students who fell in that conflict, in fact, you are just entering an atrium called the “atrium of the heroes”, from here you enter the staircase that leads to the Rectorate. At the foot of the staircase we find a statue of Arturo Martini depicting Palinuro, in memory of Primo Visentin, head of the partisan brigade Martiri del Grappa, to remember his heroic death. The staircase was decorated and frescoed by Gio Ponti and Fulvio Pendini, the staircase is called “La Scala del Sapere”. This is because there are represented the birth of humanity and knowledge and the development of the sciences through which the student climbs under the guidance of the teacher until, having become old, he murmurs the sixteenth-century motto “I still learn”. The shapes have the characteristic “twentieth century” shape of Gio Ponti.

The New Courtyard, the work of the Veronese architect Ettore Fagiuoli, is built in Osera stone and plays a functional role, solving the problem of connection between the various structures that determined the Bo complex in more recent times. The hanging structure that delimits the New Courtyard (perfectly visible in the photograph above) and which encloses the “Hall of the Academic College”, frames a large travertine high relief by Attilio Selva, made in 1939, which enhances the voluntaristic spirit of Paduan goliardia (reference to the riots of 1848) and which reflects the apologetic characteristics of fascist nationalism. Given these architectural features, it is easy to understand why the courtyard is also called “Cortile Littorio”. The courtyard overlooks the Students ‘Hall and the Students’ Hall, a meeting place for students, both rooms are entirely frescoed. In the part at the bottom of the courtyard, the high relief of the Minerva-Vittoria, by Paolo Boldrin (1942), towers and, on the southern side, the first monumental door of the University that overlooked the current Via Cesare Battisti was recomposed.

Bo Palace
Palazzo del Bo is the historical seat of the University of Padua since 1493. It is still the seat of the Rectorate and the School of Law. It is also home to the oldest Anatomical Theater in the world.

History
The University of Padua was founded by an exodus of teachers and students from the Bologna office in 1222. When the University settled in the current headquarters of the Bo, a long time had passed since its foundation and, by now, all its structures had profoundly changed from the initial ones. It was now made famous by the value of its pupils and its teachers, it could also materially be considered one of the major European universities, and the most frequented by foreign students among the universities of the Italian peninsula. Like many other complexes that have had a long historical life, that of the Bo also presents itself with a somewhat complex genesis and with events that, over the centuries, have contributed to changing its physiognomy. Therefore a historical analysis of the various components of the Palace, starting from the defined sixteenth-century nucleus, then going on to the imposing additions,

Between the current via Cesare Battisti (formerly via delle Beccarie) and via VIII February (formerly via S. Martino), in the area which today corresponds to the oldest and most monumental part of the Bo there were three houses, owned by the noble Papafava family, one of these was called the Ca ‘Bianca (domus alba a turri), in a document of 1493 reference is made to a domus alba. Therefore it is believed that these three buildings constitute the oldest nucleus of the Palace, which therefore can be traced back to 1493. This nucleus of buildings was then passed under the ownership of a butcher when he, having supplied some food during the siege of the city, had received them as a gift in 1405 from Francesco I da Carrara, lord of Padua.

The butcher had opened an inn (Hospitium Bovis) which had a bucranium as its sign, still a symbol of the University of Padua today. The name “Bo”, born derives from the name of the inn which is part of its oldest nucleus, and still today, embletically, the symbol of the university therefore remains the bucranium. Not only was the building complex called “Bo”, but also the nearby district.

The University purchased the hospitium bovis in 1493, however before it became accessible, a few more years had to pass, in fact, only in 1501 will its solemn inauguration take place. However, these early adaptation works (1493-1501) were only the first step in a radical transformation that took place a few decades later. The University was no longer to be the temporary and tumultuous seat of a precarious and subject to constant student population, but an institution no less necessary than the others that governed daily life. In 1522 the Venetian Senate (Padua was under the rule of the Serenissima Republic)) decreed that also the artist university (it should be remembered that in medieval universities these were divided into universitas iuristarum, jurists; and universitas artistarum, among which the main science was medicine), therefore, they began impressive works renovation and expansion of the Palace.

The body around which the Palace develops is the famous Ancient Courtyard, a double-order loggia of columns that extends over two floors: on that occasion it takes on the shape we know today. On the very simple structure of the double loggia the classrooms in which lessons were taught opened (and still partially open), the plan is that of a monastic cloister: implying an ancient connection between universities, places of culture, and convents, places of study and meditation too. This radical architectural intervention is attributed (although there are no sources that explicitly testify to it) to the architect Andrea Moroni, who in those years was very active in the city (in fact he will design and build the “Palazzo Comunale “, still in use today). The Ancient Courtyard is entirely adorned with numerous coats of arms, placed there until the end of the seventeenth century to represent the families of the students and those who occupied academic positions within the Universitas Patavina.

In 2013 restoration work is completed in the most picturesque part of the Palace, the famous “Ancient Courtyard”; the work involved the conservation of the factory and the restoration of all the decorative ornaments with the removal of recent irrelevant interventions. The structural consolidation of the masonry lesions, the reinforcement of the damaged vaults and the complete overhaul of the roofs with the remaking of the load-bearing structures in a poor state of maintenance were created. The restoration of all the stone elements, of the historical plaster decorated with walls, of the important collection of heraldic coats of arms, shrines and celebratory busts was carried out. Finally, the intervention saw the cleaning of the courtyard flooring and the trachyte colonnade, which over the centuries had lost the original color.

The statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro, graduated in 1678 at the University of Padua, and above all the first woman in the world to obtain a degree (in philosophy). The statue is the work of Bernardo Tabacco, an eighteenth-century Bassanese sculptor, part of a grandiose monument that the father of Cornaro (Venetian nobleman of ancient lineage) had built in the Basilica of Sant’Antonio between 1684 and 1869, transferred to the Palace in 1773, as the plaque on the base of the statue itself says.

Regarding the name of the building, for centuries it has been identified as Studio or Scuole del Bo or simply as Bo. The term Palazzo Bo was recently coined although it has no bearing on the history and history of the building.

University of Padua
The University of Padua is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law. Padua is the second-oldest university in Italy and the world’s fifth-oldest surviving university. In 2010 the university had approximately 65,000 students, in 2016 was ranked “best university” among Italian institutions of higher education with more than 40,000 students, and in 2018 best Italian university according to ARWU ranking.

The university is conventionally said to have been founded in 1222 (which corresponds to the first time when the University is cited in a historical document as pre-existing, therefore it is quite certainly older) when a large group of students and professors left the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom (‘Libertas scholastica’). The first subjects to be taught were law and theology. The curriculum expanded rapidly, and by 1399 the institution had divided in two: a Universitas Iuristarum for civil law and Canon law, and a Universitas Artistarum which taught astronomy, dialectic, philosophy, grammar, medicine, and rhetoric. There was also a Universitas Theologorum, established in 1373 by Urban V.

The university is constantly ranked among the best Italian universities. In 2016 was ranked “best university” among Italian institutions of higher education with more than 40,000 students, and in 2018 best Italian university according to ARWU ranking.

The University of Padua is also recognized in international rankings. In the 2019 CWUR ranking it is ranked 160th worldwide (2nd in Italy only after the University of Rome – La Sapienza). In the 2019 US News World Ranking the University of Padua is ranked 122th (tied with the University of Bologna as the best Italian) and 48th in Europe.