01 - Riviera Paleocapa, 10

Entering the neoclassical hallway and sensing-beyond the adjoining courtyard-the presence of the garden according to a gradual transition from shadow to light mediated by the crisp framing of white columns, it is natural to imagine finding ourselves in a romantic, nineteenth-century atmosphere. This vague foreboding becomes reality when we reach the garden, centered on a vast central lawn that rises in the distance along a barely noticeable hillside relief. From the meadow-which looks almost like a clearing open to the light-a side path enters the wooded scrub in the background, rich with shrubs. Standing out among the cool, somber foliage are a Magnolia grandiflora in the center, a hackberry (Celtis australis) on the right, and a paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) on the left. The tall tree walls of neighboring gardens beyond the fence walls accentuate the quiet stillness of this garden, enhanced by the intense summer colors of roses, hydrangeas and oleanders.

 

02 - Via Euganea, 48

The interior garden of the 16th-century Carli Donaudy palace is visually characterized by its architectural structure, highlighted by the crisp geometric arrangement of flower beds and gravelled paths and the subdued color variety, limited to flower patches in large terracotta pots and the sequence of roses arranged in a semicircle within a grassy flower bed. The formal pattern of reference is, however, enlivened by monumental trees that create a pattern of chiaroscuro effects on the changing daylight, among which a willow, horse chestnuts and fir trees stand out close to the boundary walls. Near the flower beds, a few female statues alternate with bowls filled with flowers and fruits on stone plinths. These elements suggest that this striking garden, like many historic gardens in Padua, received a "romantic-landscape" configuration during the 1800s, on the lines of the Treves de' Bonfili garden in Pontecorvo, designed by Giuseppe Jappelli.

  

03 - Riviera S. Benedetto, 90

The garden of the Maria Ausiliatrice Institute is part of the Pisani De Lazara palace, renovated in neoclassical forms in the late 1700s by Gian Antonio Selva, a stage designer, building and garden architect. The complex was used from 1945 onward mainly as a training house, boarding house, orphanage, and school. Because of this receptive vocation, the original features were gradually transformed, as evidenced by the garden that opens, beyond the entrance, into a vast and essential square centered on a flower bed.

From here an avenue, bordered by a laurel hedge, leads into an equally vast space shaded by tall trees, including conifers and maples. At the far end, in a secluded position, a faux-rock cavity houses a statue of the Virgin Mary. Along the left side of the garden, a canopy protects a sequence of benches to a concrete courtyard. The impression is that of a "recreational" garden for young students, offering the opportunity for a walk or a rest in the shady quiet of the trees, in addition to school and social activities.

 

04 - Via S.Giovanni di Verdara, 36

A wisteria and two centuries-old magnolias define the two cloisters of the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena, now home to the Leonardo da Vinci Institute, evoking in the imagination a

distant time when the Savonarola district, bordering the 16th-century Venetian walls, was characterized precisely by the refined integration of architecture and gardens in convent complexes and residence palaces. Today, the sparse plant presences enhance the essential and silent beauty of the cloisters, created in the Renaissance and similar in architectural and decorative setting: the wisteria for contrast between the aerial and twisted branching and the sharp linearity of the columns framing the central well; the foliage of the static magnolias animating the white walls, profiled by arches, projecting there a variable play of light and shadow during the day. The historical reconstruction of the site from the 1400s to the present day took place thanks to the project  Perspectives of Memory, conceived by Prof. Pellegrino and developed by the students who highlighted - with the support of a number of institutions including the University of Padua Department of Engineering ICEA and the State Archives - its artistic features, religious events and peculiar cultural role in the 1500s as a training school for young friars and aristocrats.

 

05 - Via G.B. da Monte, 2

The garden of the Maria Ausiliatrice Institute is part of the Pisani De Lazara palace, renovated in neoclassical forms in the late 1700s by Gian Antonio Selva, a stage designer, building and garden architect. The complex was used from 1945 onward mainly as a training house, boarding house, orphanage, and school. Because of this receptive vocation, the original features were gradually transformed, as evidenced by the garden that opens, beyond the entrance, into a vast and essential square centered on a flower bed. From here an avenue, bordered by a laurel hedge, leads into an equally vast space shaded by tall trees, including conifers and maples. At the far end, in a secluded position, a faux-rock cavity houses a statue of the Virgin Mary. Along the left side of the garden, a canopy protects a sequence of benches to a concrete courtyard. The impression is that of a "recreational" garden for young students, offering the opportunity for a walk or a rest in the shady quiet of the trees, in addition to school and social activities.

  

06 - Via G.B. da Monte, 3

The long and narrow garden space is enhanced by a simple and essential design. A beautiful field maple, with full, dense foliage, highlights the location of the stepped entrance, surrounded on either side by two ball-pruned pictophores. The grassy corridor to the left, marked on the ground by light-colored stone squares and laterally by the continuous hedge of photinia, leads beyond the corner to a familiar, secluded, shady space. At the end of the hallway, against the backdrop of the ivy-quilted brick boundary wall, grows a fig tree over which a wisteria vine wraps itself, drawing festoons of flowering clusters in spring. A black kitten and dog Tobia are the happy janitors of this garden.

 

07 - Via G.B. da Monte, 5

From the entrance, the outlines of palm trees announce a garden that retains an atmosphere of yesteryear. As those who live there confirm, recalling the mention of 1928 as the date of the house's construction, and as the overall image of the garden - ideal when caught at the foot of the short central staircase - testifies, one can sense precisely the echo of the European 'exotic' style popular in Italy during the first half of the 1900s, according to a particular characteristic: the juxtaposition of unusual-looking plants, such as banana trees or Chamaerops excelsa, with a formal design of Renaissance reminiscence in the layout. Again, the curvilinear flowerbed layout is highlighted by Convallaria japonica borders and gravel paths. The central Chamaerops, now associated with young plants, should be about the age of the house. Around it, toward the tall border fence carpeted with ivy or protected by privet hedges, several shrubs fan out while the upright profile of a cedar appears to the right.

  

08 - Via Arnaldo Fusinato, 57

At first glance, this garden looks typically urban: a functional geometric lawn, flanked along the fences by an evergreen hedge of false jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides), under which borders of flowers and herbs grow. At a closer look, however, it is a unique 'open-air' vegetable garden where the owner passionately and skillfully experiments with the dream of an unprecedented Mediterranean and exotic space in the city. On the left, in the shade of a peach tree (sprouted from a Spanish seed) and a Feijoa sellowiana (South American origin), capers, a jacaranda, a mango are developing in pots. In front of the house, a chinotto shrub is lushly producing sun-colored fruit. To the side of the house, to the left, a canopy of Spanish jasmine (Jasminum grandiflorum), which is very rare in northern Italy because of the harsh winter temperatures, is developing, followed by a minikiwi and rose climbers. The borders also poetically contain flowers from distant journeys or country walks, such as nigellas and wild strawberries.

  

09 - Via Raggio di Sole, 3/A

he Camerini Rossi complex, originally an institute for troubled boys (late 1800s), is now home to the IRPEA (Istituti Riuniti Padovani di Educazione e Assistenza) foundation, which welcomes people with disabilities on a daily basis, supporting their human, social and professional growth. The development of the large garden is entrusted to the Coltiviamo il Nostro Futuro (Let's Cultivate Our Future) project: a network of closely related activities based on the principles of environmental sustainability, urban greening, and recycling, developed with the guidance of experts in carpentry, ceramics, and agriculture, often with the support of outside associations. The vast garden, which constituted the rural grounds of the monastery of the Order of the Cruciferous (1100-1600), has become an open-air laboratory in which traditional spaces such as the vine arbor, the ground vegetable garden, the beds of aromatic plants, and the succulent plant nursery combine with the innovative three green roofs, raised vegetable gardens, and climbing vegetable structures made of reclaimed wood. Around, toward the borders, several trees grow, including poplars and hornbeams, almost suggesting the image of a nascent lowland forest.

 

10 - Via delle Palme, 8

Within the lap of a protective pyracantha hedge, abutting the outer fence, is enclosed a very special and striking garden. If, in fact, the rose creepers framing the central staircase at the entrance to the house would suggest a traditional, formal and decorative imprint, around it instead our gaze is surprised, having the impression of being in the unprecedented atmosphere of an oriental-inspired garden, almost a fragment of forest, imperceptibly touched by the hand of man. On the right, the graceful textures of a maple tree and a medlar tree loom up; on the left, the flowerbed becomes a carpet of underbrush quilted with hellebores. The vegetation creates an enveloping evergreen space around the house, thanks to a continuous sequence of shrubs and creepers, varying in shape, volume, and density of foliage. Beyond the ivy pergola, enlivened by stone cherubs, the garden ends in the shade of a privet and a shiny magnolia.

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11 - Via delle Palme, 24

Beyond an iron gate, one discovers a garden enveloped in a quiet atmosphere of fresh greenery. In front of the house facade, the formal layout of the flowerbeds almost suggests the impression of an outdoor room: orderly and symmetrical in the carpet drawn by the circular shapes and gravel paths. Within the mixtilinear flowerbeds, three magnolias and a poplar tree grow to replace the original four supple pine trees, which died of desiccation during the drought-ridden summer of 2003. In the center, a fountain gushed. The garden dates from the 1920s, like the house, marked by the "neo-Renaissance" taste of the time, which combined regular, symmetrical forms with evergreen trees. Everywhere, today one catches the "signs" that the inhabitants of the house lovingly scatter in the garden: in the lush rose bushes; in the lively sequence of pots where, in particular, succulent plants found on the street or on the road grow; in the vivid tales of childhood games.

 

12 - Via Francesco Petrarca, 11 new

In the half-lighted hallway, an unexpected family scene painted about a century ago announces on the left wall the quiet but vibrant breath of light and foliage of the garden, which is divided into two spaces, recently renovated according to a careful and evocative design. From the porch, one enters the old courtyard attached to the palace, conservatively restored, framed on the right by an elegant oleander stretched almost like an arch and on the left by a wisteria climbing the terrace, wrapping itself around a thin metal frame. Through an arched diaphragm, covered with a dense Clematis armandii creeper, one enters the newly laid-out garden, which nevertheless retains in its brick rectangle layout the imprint of the original spatial arrangement, consisting of the stable building and, further on, the brolo. A straight trachyte path, linking the main and secondary entrances, separates the nymphaeum on the right from the expansive carpets of hydrangeas and pittosporum on the left. Further on, the area of the ancient brolo is enlivened by light clumps of grasses, rosemary and ireos. A young growing hackberry tree stands out, flanked by fragrant Olea fragrans. Everywhere the eye, deepening and widening views, catches the diffuse and variable texture of the vegetation - shrubs, creepers, pale spring and summer flowers - that covers with "natural" grace the structures and materials of the paths and architecture.

 

13 - Via Enrico degli Scrovegni, 30 new

In a deeply urbanized area, the Amedeo Modigliani State High School of Art stands out thanks to the garden that accompanies its concrete and glass architecture, articulated in sharp-edged geometric blocks. At the entrance, a sculpture, created by Antonio Ievolella and dedicated to the family, is shaded by a circle of trees that continue in mixed sequence to the left, bordering Berlinguer Street. Along the opposite side, car parking is arranged, protected by a dense hedge of laurel cerasus. In the vicinity of the auditorium arcades is an entire part of the facility completely dedicated to the free artistic expression of students: a very "urban" space filled with colorful murals. The garden, set according to the beautiful feature of being visible from the outside, develops posteriorly for students' breaks and meetings, opening into a vast space of rustic lawn crossed by a network of asphalt paths with benches: almost a vast clearing in a contemporary urban forest of buildings, evoked by the free arrangement of trees and shrubs - some of them perhaps spontaneous - suggesting human contact with the sky and nature. The garden also houses a transparent structure, called an Igloo, which students often use to paint.

 

14 - Via Altinate, 160

Enclosed between Via Altinate and Via Santa Sofia is an elegant garden, laid out in a vast geometric meadow that penetrates, to the right, into an almost secret sphere, protected by the umbrella-like canopy of a linden tree. The grassy space is delineated by footpaths according to a pattern of squared stones and framed by the lateral sequence of trees - such as red beech, field maples, magnolia, and fir - that stand out thanks to the variety of green tones, bearing, and density of foliage, naturally harmonizing the differentiated backdrop between the 'emptiness' of the street and and the 'solids' of the architectures, different in age and style. A border of Hydrangea quercifolia, combined in places with clumps of Nandina domestica, declines the even, diffuse light of the lawn from the center toward the borders, accentuating the effect of a humble, collected atmosphere.

 

15 - Via Altinate, 116

A wide gateway leads to the courtyard, denoted by an American vine climbing the building's inner facade and a thick laurel hedge protecting a small but rich garden, announced at the entrance by a Japanese cherry tree. In the center, a well, adorned with pots of succulents and a climbing rose dating from the 19th century, distributes the space into four beds bordered by bricks and decorated with column fragments, where shrubs such as Magnolia stellata, lemon, oleander, and Nandina domestica grow, and clumps of aromatic plants such as sage and rosemary. All around, the boundary walls are hidden by dense patches of trees that create a moist and shady atmosphere around the open central space, over which the foliage of a maple tree, a Gingko biloba specimen and a majestic hackberry tree stand out.

 

16 - Via Altinate, 67 new

The garden unfolds in a lush island of tree canopies between the facades of historic architecture: the San Gaetano palace on the right, the Bembo Camerini palace now the Museo della Terza Armata on the left, two apartment buildings from the 1930s opposite. From the entrance, the eye immediately lingers on the backdrop of trees that filter the surrounding urban scene with sinuous diaphragms of foliage. The garden's central lane is shaded by an ultracentennial yew tree. To the right, a palm tree, a paulonia, and a Magnolia denuded by waxy flowers shade a few shrubs including a large philadelphus. To the left, beyond a scrub consisting of an oleander and a Lagerstroemia, rises the "mound" on which a Magnolia grandiflora grows, evoking the late 19th-century romantic setting of the garden, as do the thick borders of convallaria surrounding the rose beds. Two more than 100-year-old plane trees overlook the boundary wall with the garden of Palazzo Bembo Camerini. The mound to the left of the entrance was a bunker connected to the present Third Army Museum, which became a German garrison during World War II, although today the horse chestnut tree and shrubs harmoniously connect its elevated space to the quiet, shady atmosphere of the garden.

 

17 - Via Zabarella, 82

An open doorway always attracts attention, especially if the shapes of a garden can be glimpsed in the distance. As in the case of the garden of this historic building on Zabarella Street, once a private residence and now a University Center, which unfolds in a system of flowerbeds shaded by tree canopies at the edge of a vast square. In the center, rose bushes grow in the round flowerbed bordered by clumps of Convallaria japonica. Farther on, herbs mingle with flexuous iris stems, replaced in summer bloom by oleanders and hydrangeas. An American elm, a linden tree, laurels, a few palms and fruit trees stand out among the trees. While retaining traces of the early twentieth-century setting in the combination of ornamental flower beds and patches of trees in the background, the garden is also a living and dynamic space, rich in color and form, frequented daily by university students (and others), particularly at cultural gatherings, film screenings and concerts.

 

18 - Via del Santo, 57

The small triangular garden is part of the courtyard of the Liceo Amedeo di Savoia Duca d'Aosta high school and was created in 2014 on the initiative of Nicola, a school aide, who enhanced it by gradually clearing the earth of the debris that had settled there and initiating a lively planting effort. Next to the Acer negundo in the center, which survived during the school's renovations, a banana tree and an oleander are now growing, along with clumps of aromatic herbs such as lavender, bulbous plants and other plants brought in by pupils and teachers. Prominent among them is the mimosa, a tribute to the school by a young engaged couple on March 8 a few years ago. There is also a statue depicting Dante Alighieri, recently restored by an alumnus, while among the leaves of the maple tree appears the slight figure of a ballerina, created in 2013 by Padua artist Virgilio Barison. The hope is that this garden will continue to flourish, thanks to the care of Nicola and the school's students.

 

19 - Via S. Francesco, 118

Within the long portico of the convent complex of St. Francis built in two phases in the 1400s and 1500s, to the left of the entrance to the church, through a doorway one enters the ancient cloister dedicated to St. Anthony, decorated by a 17th-century fresco cycle with stories of the saint. In the center, bordered by the arched porticoed lap, the grassy space is defined toward the corners by four Magnolia grandiflora, which almost resemble finely crafted candelabra, while in random positions grow a few banana trees, a palm tree, a medlar tree and a few young olive trees. Behind the low walls, a border of aromatic herbs, hydrangea shrubs along the side bordering the church, acanthus and calla lilies combining with potted plants, and two specimens of Kerria japonica 'Pleniflora' bloom. For the Franciscan fathers of the convent, the cloister is a daily place of prayer and silent meditation that they gladly share with passing visitors.

 

20 - Via Cesare Battisti, 241

The Department of Statistical Sciences at the University of Padua is housed in the former convent of St. Catherine, built in the 1600s to house the nuns of St. Mary Magdalene Illuminate who cared for single women in distress. Beyond the entrance hall, the main garden expands spaciously as a meeting place for students on breaks from classes, functionally characterizing itself according to a linear development of pedestrian paths and lawns shaded by shrubs. But beyond that, turning right, one enters the Statistical Garden where the differently intimate and collected atmospheres of intellectual study and prayer seem to merge together, recalled by the walls of St. Catherine's Church in the background. On a slight undulating rise, to the left, linden trees and a Celtis australis grow in a circle: an evocative and suspended space, almost a natural scene for music and theater events, in line with the future recreational use of the garden planned by the University Department.

 

21 - Via Galileo Galilei, 17

From the shady entrance hall of the ancient palace, located in an area of the city once rich in vegetable gardens and orchards, one enters a vast and bright garden, characterized in the center by a circular flowerbed, surrounded by five other bean-shaped flowerbeds, which seems to evoke an original formal, "Italian-style" layout. Beyond this unified space, a Romantic-landscape-inspired path - with winding paths, decorated by some sculptures, and two knolls - gradually develops according to the typical taste of 19th-century gardens, consisting of a free sequence of trees and shrubs. One gets the impression of being in a "forest," where Sophora japonica, about 4 m in circumference and coming from faraway Japan in the late 18th century, a magnolia and a linden tree stand out in majesty; there are also some fruit trees, such as loquats, pomegranates and an apple tree, planted during the 20th century. Presumably, the palace and garden were inhabited by Galileo Galilei, during his stay in Padua between 1592 and 1610, as evidenced by a writing by the scientist himself attesting to its contiguity with the Cornaro court, which can be visited today from Via Cesarotti (near the Santo).

 

22 - Via Bartolomeo d’Alviano

Giuseppe Jappelli (1783-1852), architect and garden designer, created the garden for the Treves de' Bonfili family and renovated the mansion (replaced after World War II by a hospital building) by the first half of the 1800s. It was a garden of great attraction until its decline during the 1900s: "landscaped," because it recreated the atmospheres of the nearby Euganean forests and incorporated contextual urban emergencies, such as the domes of the Saint; "romantic," because it involved visitors, thanks to the emotional effects of water, winding paths, and unexpected architecture such as the grotto-pagoda; "philosophical," for those who could grasp the symbolic signs of a secret inner itinerary; and "botanical garden" with specimens, then exotic, of palms and other plants. Today, the intimate essence of the communal garden - the consonance between Nature and Man - still survives thanks to the formal design, neoclassical temple and architectural traces recovered by the careful restoration in the late 1900s, which blend with the seasonal breath of the trees.

 

23 - Piazza del Santo, 11

Beyond the large wrought-iron doorway, usually closed, at the end of the Chapter Cloister is the unseen Novitiate Cloister, so called by the young men who lived there before taking religious vows. A number of distinguished religious and lay people were buried here. Built between 1474 and 1482, it develops into a Renaissance loggia with round arches, supported by a system of arches still in Gothic style and 28 trachyte columns. It was frescoed by Jacopo da Montagnana (the Mystic Marriage of St. Catherine, now in the Antonian Museum, remains). The meadow is divided into four spaces, each bordered by shrubs of Pittosporum tobira; in the center, a wellhead vera adorned with tritons and cupids, by Giovanni Minello of 1492, stands out. Meditation and peace are the feelings suggested by this secluded place, framed by the towers and domes of the Basilica: a "landscape of the soul" that perhaps inspired Giosuè Carducci, when he wrote the verses "Nel chiostro del Santo" (collection "Rime e ritmi," 1899), imprinted in marble in the cloister.

 

24 - Vicolo Santonini, 14

Behind the apsidal volumes of the Basilica del Santo, the Orti occupy the island between the Alicorno and Santa Chiara canals that join beyond the Pontecorvo bridge in the Treves garden. The land, intended for vegetable gardens and vineyards, was acquired by the friars of the Saint in the late 1500s, alienated in 1800 and finally repurchased in the 1930s. Within the diffuse setting of tall trees - limes, cedars, beeches, magnolias - the Orti today run along the tongue of land, alternating with olive trees, loquats, fruit trees and clumps of lavender. To the left, a charming promenade, shaded by vine arbors, flanks the straight course of the Santa Chiara canal, losing itself in the distance -- beyond a gate -- in an almost wooded scrub. On the opposite bank of the canal, the singular square building of the Darsena Antica, topped by a belvedere terrace, is marked by the slender outlines of the palm trees behind and the patches of caper trees clinging to the brick walls.

 

25 - Via Jacopo Stellini, 5 new

At the street entrance, the garden is announced by the conical greenish-blue foliage of a cedar and a lush wisteria vine. Beyond the gate a side path, bordered on the left by patches of calla lilies, stretches into a meadow that opens to pansies and daisies in spring. Loosely arranged around a central bed of roses are laurel shrubs, oleander and a Magnolia obovata that blooms with pink candles before becoming covered with leaves. A mixed border of vegetation surrounds the house, interrupted along the front by a semicircular stone pool that houses goldfish and water lilies. Along the fence, two linden trees on either side, clumps of aspidistra at the back and wraparound ivy embroideries almost seem to highlight the naturalness of this unprecedented garden, squeezed between urban backdrops, populated by insects and blackbirds, which preserves intact in those who care for it the intense family memory of fruit trees and cultivated vegetables, of precious habits and daily breaks experienced with loved ones.

 

26 - Via Giuseppe Ferrari, 2/A

Enclosed in the Abbey of Santa Giustina is the cloister, known as the "painted" cloister, which preserves the remains of the cycle dedicated to the life of St. Benedict, frescoed by Bernardino da Parenzo, the Parentino, in the late 1400s and by Girolamo Tessari, called Dal Santo, in the mid-1500s. The geometric layout of the garden dates from 1919, when the Benedictine monks, removed at the time of Napoleon, returned to reside in the abbey. Four squares of rustic lawn are generated from the orthogonal intersection of two paved paths, where plants specially chosen to evoke the life of St. Giustina grow through the prevalence of white and red, the colors symbolic of virginity and martyrdom: from the white flowers of gardenia, Magnolia florans and Olea fragrans to the fiery flowers of Callistemon, the berries of nandina, and the foliage of Japanese maple. Around the perimeter, pots with geraniums, clumps of agave and aspidistra rest on the base. Eight tall palms and young Gingko biloba specimens complete the garden's botanical design.

 

27 - Prato della Valle, 64

The Oreste Salomone barracks is developed within the convent of Santa Giustina. After ups and downs that began with Napoleon's ecclesiastical suppressions, the part denoted by the ancient cloisters was returned to the monks, who had been resettled since 1919, while the rest, which had been used by the Italian Army as a hospital and training center during World War I, became barracks, now the headquarters of the Northern Operations Forces Command. The entrance still retains a quiet and shady atmosphere thanks to the vegetation, formally arranged in the Sacrarium Cloister around the central fountain, and freely in the vast space that follows. Lime trees, firs, and magnolias, along with palm trees and shrubs, create two gardens along the driveway connecting to the military complex, which occupies the convent's original farmland. From here, looking up, one catches an unexpected glimpse of the basilica's domes framed by the tree profiles, almost as in a Romantic print from the 1800s.

 

28 - Via Michele Sanmicheli, 65

The City of Padua's Santa Giustina Rose Garden-situated just a stone's throw from Prato della Valle, on the embankment of the 16th-century walls near the Santa Giustina tower-has been designed as an itinerary to introduce visitors to the knowledge of roses from different perspectives: the botanical evolution over time, through significant specimens that testify to the gradual transition from naturally occurring species to those hybridized by man; the sensory perception of the poise, shapes and colors of the flowers and, in particular, of the scents; and some special selections, including one named after representative people who lived in the Veneto region, such as Beatrice d'Este and St. Anthony of Padua. Walking along the central avenue, elevated above street level, especially in spring and early summer "breathe in" an evocative atmosphere, suspended between the dense blooms of the roses and the compact fronts of the tree canopies of the streets and gardens below, which make the city unexpectedly remote.

 

29 - Viale Felice Cavallotti

At the end of Via Pio X, the Alicorno Garden seems to present itself as the natural conclusion of the tree-shaded Garden City neighborhood, in open contact with the sky and the water of the Trunk Master. The center is the summit cover of the Alicorno keep, which has become an unexpected circular clearing in the city. Inside, the southernmost keep of Padua's 16th-century walls, recently restored, features a complex spatial distribution on three floors, arranged for potential exhibition and theater functions. Today the garden is public, but during the 1800s it was part of the Trieste garden (the remaining complex is the site of a bank), which was supposed to be very rich in majestic and rare trees of exotic origin such as Taxodium distichum, Liquidambar orientalis, Liriodendron tulipifera, cedars and magnolias, freely arranged according to the landscape taste of English gardens of the 1700s and already interpreted in Padua by Giuseppe Jappelli in the Treves garden in Pontecorvo. Today, the Alicorno garden is characterized as a green oasis connecting the city center and the embankment promenades.

 

30 - Via Alicorno, 7 bis

The garden is located in the Città Giardino neighborhood, toward the Alicorno bastion of the 16th-century walls of Padua. From the access path, to the right of the dwelling, one reaches a space scented by the lush Trachelospermum jasminoides climbing the wall, where rose trees and shrubs, hydrangeas, camellias, rhododendrons and oleanders grow, along with a small but productive berry crop. Beyond a small red brick wall, near the veranda, is the pool in a tile-covered area adorned with potted plants and a cactus. At the back, in a defiladed position, the rear of the house is usefully used as a bicycle parking area and a shelter for garden care tools. Protected by a hedge along the borders, the garden-which the owners substantially care for themselves-contributes to defining the "Verdi" soul of the neighborhood, linking with the shady tree sequence of the adjoining gardens.

 

31 - Piazzale Santa Croce, 44

The Cloister and Pilgrims' Garden are part of the Father Leopold Shrine (1866-1942), built after the Capuchin church and convent in Padua were demolished during an air raid in World War II. In the center of the paved cloister, an ancient well, in the shape of an inverted pyramid trunk, perhaps evokes the ancient origins of the complex dating back to the mid-1500s. The adjoining garden is divided into a side walkway flanked by a slightly elevated lawn where shrubs and hydrangea bushes grow. On the far corner grows a fir tree, donated to Father Leopold in 1937, which generates-along with the equally pyramidal outlines of the cedars of Piazzale Sante Croce, emerging beyond the perimeter wall-a shady and collected atmosphere suitable for a thought, a prayer. Among the plants, two carved figures of the Virgin and Child and a painted image of the Saint appear protective to visitors.

 

32 - Via Cappuccini, 1/C

From the large functional courtyard, organized in squares of lawn, we proceed to the right along a peripheral avenue, flanked by a striking border of pink hydrangeas. Gradually, with unexpected surprise, we begin to take in-beyond the continuous row of evergreens on the left-an open rural space among shrubby patches, albeit framed by the architectural volumes of the sanctuary of San Leopoldo and the urban bell tower of the church of Santa Croce. The vegetable gardens, tended with expert passion by outside volunteers, are lush with firstlings and seasonal crops that alternate with espaliers of vines and patches of flowers with an ancient flavor, such as dahlias and zinnias. Beyond the fruit trees and olive trees that surround the cultivated field, the atmosphere becomes "wooded" interwoven with firs and holm oaks, to enclose the "The baid," a place of prayer and meditation, in memory of a hermit's shelter lost in nature.

 

33 - Via Quattro Novembre, 23 new

At the end of the row of magnolia trees on Via IV Novembre is a small but striking public garden, surrounded by the elliptical Palazzo Esedra, at the center of which stands the statue of Victor Emmanuel II, symbol of the Unification of Italy along with those of Cavour, Garibaldi and Mazzini in Padua in the late 1800s. Similarly, the Palazzo Esedra, built between 1925 and 1928 to a design by architect Gino Peressutti, represents an important phase in the city's history during the Fascist twenty-year period because of its future urban and social effects: the start of the Città Giardino district in the southern area, occupied until then by historic gardens and rural spaces, which was supposed to house the inhabitants of the center, displaced for the reconstruction of the Santa Lucia district, but which in reality became an elegant residential home accessible by commercial means. Surrounding the central statue are still symmetrically arranged four magnolia trees that project their foliage onto the walls of the building, sealing the early 1900s urban planning approach, marked by criteria of order and decorum. But recently, thanks to the joint initiative of the Consulta di Quartiere chaired by Celeste Giaccon and the City of Padua, and thanks to Mapi Cunico, architect and historian of the Garden and Landscape, the forgotten garden has come alive with living plant presences: the red bed of roses at the foot of the statue, the floating, slender canopies of grasses, and the dense shrubs of variegated-leaf hydrangeas growing in the two side beds, voluntarily tended by a group of nature-loving neighborhood residents.

 

34 - Vicolo Cigolo

Even before we cross the entrance, we feel a warm impression of harmony thanks to the vegetal interweaving of nature and architecture. Indeed, the evergreen hedge of false jasmine, drooping from the brick fence, seems to transform imperceptibly into the dense vine of parietal vine (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) that 'embraces' the rear facade of this beautiful early 20th-century mansion. From the courtyard paved in pink-and-white checkerboards, a central archway, resting on a low wall, leads to the garden, lush with trees, shrubs and creepers that almost obliterate the stone boundaries with their plant textures. Surrounding the lawn are the canopies of a locust tree, a palm tree, a magnolia, an Acer negundo, followed by a laurel tree, a Judas tree (Cercis siliquastrum), an olive tree, from right to left, toward the side adjoining Via Carducci. The house, with its interior front embroidered with two climbing wisteria, is an integral part of this garden that is so alive and certainly much loved by its inhabitants.

 

35 - Prato della Valle, 82

In Prato della Valle, at the intersection with Via Cavalletto, the long façade of an ancient porticoed palace unfolds, connected to the sky by a cornice with circular and acute profiles. Designed shortly after the mid-1500s by architect Andrea Moroni, who was active in Padua on the nearby Santa Giustina church site and on those of the Podestà (now Palazzo Moroni) and Bo palaces,' it became a military operations headquarters in the early 1900s and later the Army's Unified Circle. From the shady entrance there is a glimpse of the garden, framed by the two-columned arch and the large window. Beyond a paved space stretches a lawn, embellished in the center by a fountain. At the corners grow specimens of Chamaerops excelsa, an oriental palm tree typical of gardens in the Po Valley between 1800 and 1900 for its unprecedented exotic appearance and resistance to the harsh climate, while at the back a cedar and laurel border the garden in a vegetal backdrop.

 

36 - Via Dimesse, 8

Across the street from Collegio Dimesse is a grassy garden, lush with trees, framing two small terraced houses dating from the early 20th century. Formerly home to a historic Padua nursery, the complex is now part of the College. Sister Grace, formerly a teacher in the College's elementary school, and the three sisters who make up the small community seek to make this place ever more welcoming, taking care of it with passion. In fact, the garden is organized according to an essential design but rich in "botanical episodes." A central gravel driveway separates two grassy spaces, shaded by a rich variety of trees such as linden in the center, magnolia and weeping willow on the left, and fruit trees on the right. Moving forward, we discover on the left a graceful micro-pergola of vines, followed along the boundary wall by shrubs of small fruits; and on the right the lush "aromatic garden," frequented by the school's student children. Everywhere vegetable corners grow along with seasonal flowers, creating the suggestion of a country space in the city of ancient memory.

 

37 - Via Acquette, 4

From the gate of via Acquette 4, a gravel driveway, bordered by patches of hydrangeas among which stand out specimens of 'quercifolia,' leads to a garden nestled between houses that retains its original layout, dating from the 1950s, of geometric flowerbeds limited by box hedges and concrete profiles. It was originally an orchard. Today, a few replanted specimens recall the time when cherry trees offered, with a few branches outstretched, unexpected "country" fruits to passersby on neighboring Memmo Street. Countless roses bloom lushly in the flower beds between May and June, along with clumps of sage and berry shrubs. To the left, a square terrace, almost a belvedere open to the arboreal horizon of the nearby gardens, is clad in the glossy foliage of an evergreen clematis; to the right, under the foliage of an oleander, the circular shape of a well can be glimpsed, to which an apricot-colored climbing rose is wrapped.

 

38 - Via Rogati, 17

The garden of the Barbarigo Institute is simple and linear, enclosed within a turn of a portico. Connected to the palace dating back to the early 1500s and renovated in the mid-1700s, as the main floor and the access staircase still testify, it has followed an evolution over time until it assumed its current configuration, centered on the path among the more than 40 supple palm trees, planted in the 1970s, leading to the small central fountain, designed by Prof. Fausto Soranzo in the 1950s. Other plants such as pomegranates, olive trees, and oleanders accentuate the sharp silhouettes of the exotic trees with their informal bearing: a vague atmosphere, often intercepted by the sound of harp and other instruments, from the Music School. To learn about the history of the place, built on the experiences of the young people who inhabited it even in tragic times such as during the German occupation in World War II, one can turn to the voice of Don Cesare Contarini, rector of the paritarian institute with a classical and scientific high school, economic technician and middle school.

 

39 - Via Carlo Dottori, 3

In the elegant entrance hall of this seventeenth-century palazzo, the eye is immediately drawn to the wisteria arbor visible to the right, at the entrance to the garden, lush with fragrant flower clusters in spring. As in many of Padua's palace, this garden retains the memory of the Romantic-eclectic setting prevalent in the late 1800s and early 1900s: a central space, exposed to light, surrounded by an enveloping frame of trees and shrubs that introduce a shady, moist 'woodland' atmosphere. A mixtilinear gushing fountain, decorated with small encrusted rocks and placed centrally, and the elevation of the ground to the right, simulating a hillside relief, seem to confirm this distant landscape inspiration. A magnolia and a mighty hackberry tree stand out among the tall trees that create the dense curtain of foliage. In front of the building's interior façade is a vast flowerbed of scattered roses and hydrangeas, flanked by a silvery olive tree.

 

40 - Via Carlo Dottori, 7

From the medieval Via Carlo Dottori, a wide gateway leads to an elegant entrance in half-light. Beyond the refined "Art Nouveau" wrought-iron gate, the eye discovers a splendid secret garden, bordered by a backdrop of three centuries-old cedars and three yews that, intertwining their branches, fuse together the evergreen foliage. Along the walkway, new suggestions: the extraordinarily lush majestic oleander; numerous shrubs and plants, among which stand out some sculptural fragments and a series of splendid statues, depicting the Arts. Attributed to South Tyrolean sculptor Paul von Strudel, they were made in the last quarter of the 1600s, thus coeval with the radical renovation to which the forms of the present building are due. At the foot of the cedars, a small garden inspired by the nineteenth-century Romantic garden style overlooks the former icehouse. This garden pertains to the Palazzo dei Conti, a noble Paduan family allied with the Carraresi, who commissioned Giusto de' Menabuoi in 1382 to paint the frescoes in the Luca Belludi chapel at the Santo.

 

41 - Via dei Papafava, 1 new

A silent and collected penumbra pervades the Oratory of S. Maria dei Colombini, which ends with the sacellum adorned with a fine marble antependium depicting the vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Child to St. Anthony of Padua, an 18th-century work attributed to the Bonazza family. From the side door of the nave can be seen, next to the well of the miracle of the breviary, the grandiose cylinder-shaped trunk of the ancient plane tree (Platanus × acerifolia) that defines the space like a gigantic pillar, developing into a dome thanks to the ribbing of the branches to seal the sacred memory of the site dedicated to the saint. The tree, now a listed property, was presumably planted in the early 1800s as part of the renovation project-commissioned by the brothers Alessandro and Francesco Papafava dei Carraresi-of the residential palace and the open spaces behind, which were laid out in a Romantic-inspired garden. With the passage of time, this natural monument, too, suffered the effects of a fungal disease that necessitated the consolidation of the trunk by means of a metal structure and a program of constant monitoring and care by the Papafava family. The site is made visitable thanks to the family's willingness and the efforts of the Archconfraternity of St. Antonio of Padua, which has been dedicated to the care of the site for a number of years, promoting its preservation and historiographical research and organizing periodic programs of religious services and historical-devotional visits. Visitors will be welcomed by Sisters and Confreres assisted by AGESCI Scouts from the "Novitiate storyteller" group PADOVA 7.

 

42 - Via Marsala, 49

At the heart of the Nalin palace, the intimate space of an almost secret garden unfolds, illuminated in summer by flowering hydrangeas, interwoven by the differently dense textures of the trees growing there, including a laurel, red maple, palm and privets. A portico opens along the right side, topped by a terrace wrapped in wisteria. The atmosphere is atmospheric and subtle, almost as if the garden were a room in the house, furnished with family passion and dedication. The design of the entrance gate, the hydrangeas ready to bloom each summer, the medlar tree on the right grown from a dropped seed, like the peach tree in a shadier corner, preserve a grandmother's gaze always alive in the memory of those who today care for this mansion, home to recreational events and the C.O.S.E. IN COMUNA association. Here lived the jurist Enrico Catellani (1856-1945), a professor from Padua, a great expert in international law, who suffered in solitude the brunt of racial laws during the Nazi occupation in 1944 with the expulsion from the University and the confiscation of his property.

 

43 - Via Marsala, 59

Beyond the entrance gate, embellished with the embroidery of a vine, the garden of the Arvalli house unfolds into a vast central lawn, dominated by a cedar of Lebanon and surrounded toward the edges by a shady woodland path with tall trees and shrubs. Along the pathway to the right of the central lawn, two specimens of Celtis australis, a yew tree, a Magnolia stellata, and a sophora of Japan grow, harmonizing with flowering shrubs; to the right, toward the house, more specimens of ancient plants, along with a group of palms. The presence of sculptures -- a fragment of a Roman column, a 6th-century A.D. sarcophagus, and an 18th-century stele -- and majestic trees in random placements suggest the "romantic," humble and meditative atmosphere of a 19th-century garden, confirmed by the carefully preserved watercolor drawing dating from the 1920s, and by the owners respected in the recent rearrangement.

 

44 - Riviera Tito Livio, 9

The Cloister of the Liceo Classico Statale Tito Livio was inserted into the convent of the Benedictine nuns of Santo Stefano, built in the early 1200s, renovated in the 1500s and again in the 1600s. It became a school building since 1812. Characterized by a sharp Renaissance structure, this site is both one of the identity symbols of Padua's cultural civilization and an inescapable "starting point" in the personal memories of all the young people who, generation after generation, attended the high school. Beyond the suffused and collected atmosphere of the columned portico, punctuated by the arched profiles of the cross vaults, the architectural space opens to the living light of the sky. It is still defining itself according to the formal design of the flower beds, bordered by box hedges, surrounding the majestic Cedrus deodara in the center. Within this symmetrical setting are freely inserted patches of shrubs and individual trees - in particular, a spruce, a magnolia and a laurel - with the variable, umbral texture of foliage and foliage.