Giotto arrives in Padua on a probable commission from the Franciscan friars and sets up a construction site in the chapter house of the then Church of Sant'Antonio. Perhaps at the same time he frescoed the patronage chapel of Enrico Scrovegni, a wealthy usurer who later commissioned a cycle of frescoes from him for his noble chapel north of the city. Subsequently, the Municipality of Padua entrusted him with the pictorial decoration of the large spaces of the local court, that Palazzo della Ragione recently renovated and raised by a floor by Fra' Giovanni, an Augustinian monk of the hermit order. Of these three masterpieces, only the Scrovegni Chapel has reached us perfectly preserved, while of the frescoes of Sant'Antonio only a few fragments are visible today and fifteenth-century hands remade the frescoes of Palazzo della Ragione on the Giotto model. The visit is an opportunity to discover the political-mercantile relationships that linked Padua to Tuscany in the early fourteenth century and the consequent interest of our city in Tuscan art.

HALF DAY ROUTE. INTERIOR VISIT TO: BASILICA DI SANT'ANTONIO (compulsory radio guide rental €2 each), SCROVEGNI CHAPEL, PALAZZO DELLA RAGIONE