Prato della Valle

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The Prato della Valle , in the background the Basilica of Santa Giustina, 2012
18th century plan of Prato

The Prato della Valle ( Pra de LaVale on Venetic ) is a place in the Italian Padua . With around 90,000 square meters, the “Wiese” is not only the largest square in the city, but also one of the largest inner-city squares in Europe.

Public events took place there as early as Roman times , as well as in the Middle Ages and in later centuries. The square was given its current elliptical shape with an island in the middle, two rows of 78 statues of personalities with a connection to Padua and a canal around it in the 18th and 19th centuries. The Basilica of Santa Giustina , one of the largest churches in the world, is located on Prato .

Naming

In Roman times and in the early Middle Ages , the area was known as Campo di Marte or Campo Marzo (Mars Field) because it was used, among other things, for military marches - Mars was the Roman god of war. It was later called the Valle del Mercato because markets and commodity fairs were held there. Because of the neighboring Basilica of Santa Giustina , the name Prato di Santa Giustina was also used. The name Prato della Valle (Pratum Vallis) is mentioned for the first time in the 12th century: Pratum refers to a meadow, Valle referred to the fact that the area was in a depression. During the time of the Kingdom of Italy (1861-1946), the site was officially named Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II after King Victor Emanuel II , but it was popularly known as the Prato della Valle . Another popular name is Prà senza erba (meadow without grass) because after the redesign at the end of the 18th century, grass often no longer grew due to the tall trees on the square.

history

The original area

View of Prato before it was redesigned based on a painting by Canaletto circa 1741
Wooden horse from 1466, now on display in the Palazzo della Ragione
Memorial plaque for Michael Gaismair at the place of his murder

The Campo di Marte was south of the ancient Roman center and the great bend of the Medoacus , the old river bed of the Brenta . The Venetian road ran along here, connecting Patavium (Padua) with Ateste ( Este ) and the Adriatic Sea. On the campo there were important buildings such as the Zairo Theater on the east side, the foundations of which are under the current facility, and the city's arena . Since the Renaissance, it has been claimed that there was a Concordia temple there, but this has been disproved given the fact that it was a cemetery.

According to tradition, the Christian martyr Justina was buried in a cemetery near Prato towards the end of the reign of Emperor Maximian . From the late 5th century, a church was built there in her honor near her supposed grave. In 1117 a violent earthquake destroyed the first basilica, which was rebuilt in Romanesque style around 1123 on the initiative of Abbot Benzo. During the renovation work of 1174, the relics of St. Justina rediscovered. The Romanesque church was demolished to replace the current Renaissance church, which is considered one of the largest churches in the world. It took more than a century to build, and in 1562 the relics were brought into the new building in a solemn procession.

In 452 the city was first destroyed by the Huns under Attila , and the rebuilt city was burned down by the Lombards in 613 . Most of the ancient buildings were destroyed. Most of the residents left the city and settled in the Monselice area or in the Venice lagoon .

In 589 the Brenta changed its course due to a series of floods in the Po Valley; the entire urban area was flooded and continued to suffer from seasonal floods. The low-lying Prato terrain subsequently developed into a swampy area full of mosquitos. In 899 Hungarians sacked the city. In 970 the Bishop of Padua, Gauslinus Transalgardo, visited the area and found it "devastated and abandoned". He initiated a redesign of the Prato and the construction of the richly furnished monastery of Santa Giustina , which had also been destroyed by the Hungarians.

From the middle of the 11th century there were markets and goods fairs on the area. Every year in October and November, the major church masses were celebrated in honor of the patron saints Justina and Prosdocimus , according to legend, the city's first bishop.

The markets and the rights associated with them gave rise to numerous legal disputes between the city and the Santa Giustina monastery . In 1077 the Bishop Udalricus issued a placitum confirming the possession of the Prato to the monks of Santa Giustina and reserving the right to use the remains of the Roman theater as a quarry for the construction of the monastery. It is popularly said that the ruins of the Roman theater were used to build the Rialto Bridge in Venice , which the Bishop of Padua pledged to Venice to pay his debts there. Since the first stone Rialto Bridge was not built until the 16th century, this story is a legend.

From the 12th century onwards, alongside the annual fairs and fairs, there were theater performances and games on the Prato : there were performances such as The Wild Man and depictions of the Passion and Resurrection . At the Castello d'Amore , a Venetian tradition, young men had to conquer a castle built on the square, in which girls were, by throwing fruit, which the girls also defended by throwing fruit. The conquest, which is said to have resulted in many marriages, was followed by celebrations and banquets.

From 1257, a horse race was held annually on the promenade surrounding the Prato to celebrate the liberation from the tyranny of Ezzelino da Romano the year before. On October 7, 1399, a magnificent procession called Bianchi ended on the Prato , which had crossed the whole city for nine days and asked for peace for the following century. During a carnival event in 1466, a huge wooden horse was set up on the Prato , in reference to the legendary Trojan Antenor as the founder of the city and the Trojan horse . It was created after the model of the horse of the Condottiere Gattamelata by Donatello , whose monument stands in front of the Basilica of Saint Anthony in Padua. In 1808 the first chariot races with so-called padovanels took place in Prato , ancestors of the modern sulky for trotting races ; the races lasted until the 20th century.

On Palm Sunday, Prato was the traditional place for the gathering of "all free men of Padua". In 1238, Petrus de Vinea gave a speech to them on behalf of Emperor Friedrich II in order to get the citizens on Frederick's side in the conflict with the Pope.

At the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, the Maglio Carrarese (the town's forge) was built near Prato . This used water from the nearby canals. Together with dams that were built for the operation of the necessary mills, these systems resulted in renewed flooding of the area. Although the Prato was therefore still swampy and damp because the water from the depression could not drain, it retained its importance as a marketplace and venue for popular spectacles and religious devotions.

On April 15, 1532, the Tyrolean revolutionary Michael Gaismair , who fled the Austrians to the Republic of Venice and for whom a bounty was on offer, was murdered by three men with 42 stab wounds on the Prato . The place where he was murdered is marked with a plaque today.

The redesign

Plan of Prato in 1767, before the project was carried out by Andrea Memmo
The future Prato on an engraving by Francesco Piranesi , 1786

In 1767, after centuries of bitter disputes , the Prato passed from the possession of the monastery to that of the city after the government of the Republic of Venice , to which Padua had belonged since 1405, had decreed this. The handover was a prerequisite for the swampy terrain to be drained and paved. In the same year the Presidenza del Prato della Valle was established, an institution in which four well-known Paduan citizens sat and which had the purpose of administering the Prato and supporting the implementation of events.

The real organizer of the redesign was the Venetian politician Andrea Memmo , who had held the office of Provveditore in Padua since 1775 . He commissioned the abbot Domenico Cerato , professor of architecture at the University of Padua , with the practical implementation. At that time, Padua was considered backward, for example in contrast to Verona , which had been upgraded with numerous new buildings at the beginning of the century. The French encyclopaedist Charles de Brosses wrote about the city at the time that one could hardly imagine something “poorer, sadder and more deserted”. Memmo wanted to revitalize the impoverished city structurally and thereby economically, his main focus was on the Prato . His plans for the development of the city were supported by the scholar Melchiorre Cesarotti . The Prato was intended to become a new center of social and economic life in Padua and to increase the city's attractiveness for foreign travelers.

In the middle of the square an oval island surrounded by a canal was planned, which should be elevated. Two tree-flanked paths were to cross on the island. On the sides of the canal, 88 statues of famous Paduans were planned by local sculptors. Two bridges, flanked by obelisks, were planned over the canal to the central island, later named Memmia after Memmo . The course of the longitudinal axis of the elliptical system was planned from northwest to southeast.

Work began in the summer of 1775 in order to be able to show the first visible results at the autumn fair in Santa Giustina. During his stays in Padua, Memmo checked the progress of the work on a daily basis; he meanwhile lived in the Palazzo Angeli at the north entrance of the Prato, a building from the 15th century that had formerly belonged to Cardinal Bessarion .

The island of Memmia became the focal point . It was created by filling the central depression of the square with 10,000 truckloads of earth. The elliptical canal that surrounds the island was fed by the Alicorna canal, but also served for drainage. The water should drain through two estuaries located under the southern bridge (Ponte dei Papi) .

The canal was to be lined with two rows of sculptures of personalities. In 1776 the Presidenza presented the rules for the selection of the people to be depicted: they should be deceased and not saints, as these should be reserved for the churches, and all people had to have a connection to the city of Padua. The people selected were university professors, artists, condottieri or former rulers of the city, the poet Gaspara Stampa as the only woman. Originally, 88 statues were planned to be positioned along the canal. The sculptures were donated by citizens of Padua. A statue cost between 135 and 150 ducats (zecchini) , which could be paid in installments over several years.

An engraving by Francesco Piranesi from 1786 based on a drawing by Giuseppe Subleyras shows the planned appearance of the Prato . Memmo had this print made in order to present the project to Roman nobles as ambassador of the Serenissima to the Holy See , in the vain hope that they would help finance the planned statues. The redesign was illustrated and explained in a book by Vincenzo Radicchio in 1786.

Fixed market stalls that were initially set up, with the lease of which was to be used to finance the renovation, were dismantled again in 1782 on instructions from Memmo and banished to the southern edge of the square in front of the Misericordia monastery so as not to impair the overall impression of the Prato .

Among the foreign travelers who visited the new Prato on September 27, 1786 was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , who described him in his report Italian trip .

Andrea Memmo died in 1796, and then his project stalled. After Padua was occupied by the Napoleonic army in 1797 , six statues of Venetian doges were destroyed by French soldiers. Some pedestals have remained empty since then, or obelisks have been erected on them.

19th and 20th centuries

The fountain on the Memmia , in the background the Loggia Amulea
The Foro Boario at the south end of the square

After the change from French to Austrian rule in 1814, Memmo's ideas for the design of the square were taken up and continued. The remaining statues were erected by 1838. In addition, a total of 100 tulip trees and plane trees were planted on the Memmia . However, since the plane trees inhibited the growth of the tulip trees, they were also replaced by plane trees in the 19th century. The trees, which can reach heights of up to 40 meters, blocked the view of the Prato and its statues over the years and impaired the overall impression. In the course of the 19th century, the island and the canal got their final shape, even if they did not completely correspond to the original plan. The fountain in the middle of the Memmia , which was planned from the beginning , was only inaugurated in 1926.

On August 22, 1808, the aviation pioneers Pasquale Andreoli and Carlo Brioschi rose here in a hot air balloon . In 1825, the French aerial acrobat Elise Garnerin jumped out of a balloon with a parachute and landed on the Prato . From 1921 to 1928 the Via Beato Luca Belludi was laid out, which connects the Prato directly with the Basilica of St. Anthony (Il Santo) . In 1938 a rally with Benito Mussolini took place in front of 300,000 people on the Prato . In 1982 Pope John Paul II celebrated a mass on the Prato della Valle .

In both centuries the Prato was used for military parades by both the Italian army and foreign armies.

The Prato today

The Prato with the Basilica of Santa Giustina
Bridge on the Prato with Il Santo in the background
The place today

From the 1960s the Prato was mainly used as a parking lot by the Paduans; due to urban planning measures in the 1990s, it is largely car-free and reserved for pedestrians, cyclists, skaters and the tram.

Until 1990 the plane trees on the Prato had to be felled because they were infected by the fungus Ceratocystis fimbriata . They were replaced by 50 Norway maples, which are only up to 20 meters high and are not so heavily leafy.

Every Saturday there is the traditional weekly market in Padua with over 160 stalls and every third Sunday of the month there is an antiques market. Concerts, festivals and public viewing take place at the Prato several times a year . The running event Maratona S. Antonio , which has been held annually since 2000, ends on the Prato.

For the Ferragosto festival in 2018, 70,000 people came to Prato . The square is also repeatedly a place for demonstrations: in April 2019, over 1000 sheep, whose shepherds protested against the current agricultural policy, and in September of that year a “ Fridays for Future ” rally ended here .

Buildings in the area

There were and are important buildings on Prato della Valle . The most striking is the Basilica of Santa Giustina with the associated monastery. Until the Napoleonic secularization at the beginning of the 19th century, other churches existed in the area such as San Leonino , Santa Maria di Betlemme and the convent of Santa Maria della Misericordia ; they were torn down or used for other purposes.

The Palazzo Angeli dates from the 15th century , initially the residence of Bessarion and later of Andrea Memmo, who is said to have hosted Giacomo Casanova there. Today it houses the Museo del Precinema with the Collezione Minici Zotti . The Palazzo Zacco del Pra was built between 1555 and 1557 and is now the seat of the Padua Military Club. The Palazzo Verson belonged to the Venetian family Grimani since the 16th century; the current facade dates from the 18th century. The Loggia Amulea stands on the site of the Mula College for noble students, which was built in 1608 and fell victim to a fire in 1821. The current building was erected between 1859 and 1861 in neo-Gothic style and houses the offices of the city administration; until 1989 it was the headquarters of the Padua fire brigade.

In 1913, the Foro Boario cattle market hall was built on the site of the former Misericordia monastery and was considered “one of the most modern buildings of the time” because it had veterinary facilities, a bank, a telegraph office and a restaurant. It was demolished at the end of the 1960s except for the monumental portal, the Avancorpo , in the central arch of which there is a group of sculptures with market scenes by the sculptor Antonio Pennello . The entrance portal has been restored and will in future accommodate shops and restaurants.

Since 2009, the square and its surroundings have been managed and designed as part of the overall urban planning concept Sistema Prato della Valle . The concept also includes the Foro Boario , the Velodromo Giovanni Monti , the Stadio Silvio Appiani and the forecourt of the Basilica Santa Giustina. In the course of the redesign, there is a proposal to re-open the underground Alicorno Canal. The plans that have been discussed for years, such as the construction of an underground car park under the Foro site (today Piazza Isaac Rabin ), are sometimes highly controversial in Padua.

The statues

Statue of the Trojan Antenor, the legend after the founder of Padua
Andrea Memmo

On the Prato della Valle there are 78 roughly life-size statues (40 in the outer, 38 in the inner ring). They were created between 1775 and 1838 by various sculptors from limestone quarried in the Colli Berici near Vicenza (Pietra di Vicenza) . This soft stone is particularly suitable for use in sculpture, but it is also prone to weathering. Since the end of the 19th century there have been repeated measures to restore and preserve the statues.

The first statue was erected in 1775 by Cicero , which was replaced by a sculpture donated by Memmo of the legendary city founder Antenor , as Cicero had no relationship with Padua. The last of the original statues was that of Francesco Luigi Fanzago, a physician from the University of Padua, and was erected in 1838. Memmo itself is also represented as a sculpture; it was set up two years after his death. Statues of Dante and Giotto were placed in front of the Loggia Amulea .

During the 19th century, the statue of mathematician Giovanni Poleni , the work of Canova , was restored because it was weathered and was finally replaced by a copy in 1963. The original is in a museum.

Figures were damaged by hailstorms in 1782 and 1834, and more by soldiers during the First World War . They were restored or completely rebuilt in 1895 and 1921.

Restoration work has to be carried out on the figures again and again. The long-term plan is to replace all statues with copies and to exhibit the originals in the Musei Civici degli Eremitani , as the figures made from the soft limestone are still threatened by weathering from air pollution.

Statues on the Prato della Valle

The numbering corresponds to the numbers at the foot of the sculptures.

Outer ring

Inner ring

Plan with the numbers of the statues
Statues of Venetian doges destroyed in the Napoleonic era in 1797:

literature

  • Vincenzo Radicchio: Descrizione della general idea, ed in gran parte effettuata dall'eccellentissimo signore Andrea Memmo sul materiale che denominavansi della Valle . Rome 1786 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  • Simone Stratico: Dell'antico teatro di Padova . Padua 1795.
  • Francesco Marzolo: Curiosità idrauliche padovane: la canaletta del Prato della Valle . Penada, Padua 1940.
  • Herbert Dellwing : Veneto without Venice. A picture handbook (=  art monuments in Italy ). Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1974, p. 387 .
  • Enrico Scorzon: Il Prato della Valle e le sue statue . Lint, Trieste 1975.
  • Aldo Prosdocimi: Il Prato della Valle . Padua 1976.
  • Lionello Puppi / Giuseppe Toffanin: Guida di Padova. Arte e storia tra vie e piazze . Trieste 1983.
  • Lionello Puppi (Ed.): Prato della Valle. Due millenni di storia di un'avventura urbana . Signum, Limena (PD) 1986, ISBN 88-8475-015-6 .
  • Lorenzo Cappellini: Il Prato della Valle . Allemandi, Turin 2001, ISBN 88-422-1096-X .
  • Stefano Zaggia: Isoletta sacra al commercio ed all'arti. Andrea Memmo, Melchiorre Cesarotti e il Prato della Valle come esperimento di riforma del paesaggio urbano . In: F. Finotti (ed.): Melchiorre Cesarotti e le trasformazioni del paesaggio europeo . EUT, Trieste 2010, p. 112-128 .

Web links

Commons : Prato della Valle  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

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  2. ^ Puppi, Prato della Valle , pp. 60-61.
  3. ↑ a b c d Prato della Valle. In: Comune di Padova. Retrieved April 13, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Luciano Bosio: L'età preromana e romana , in: Puppi (Ed.): Prato della Valle , p. 37.
  5. ↑ Luciano Bosio: L'età preromana e romana , in: Puppi (ed.): Prato della Valle , pp. 44-46.
  6. ↑ Maria Pia Billanovich: Una miniera di epigrafi e di antichità: il chiostro maggiore di S. Giustina in Padova (= Italia medioevale e umanistica , 12), 1969, p. 283 ff.
  7. ^ Girolamo Zampieri: La tomba di San Luca Evangelista. La cassa di piombo e l'area funeraria della Basilica di Santa Giustina in Padova , Rome 2003, pp. 37-39.
  8. ↑ Francesco GB Trolese: Il Monumento Nazionale dell'Abbazia di Santa Giustina in Padova , in: Accademie & Biblioteche d'Italia 3-4 / 2013. Trimestrale di cultura delle biblioteche e delle istituzioni culturali , Rome 2006, pp. 62–69.
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  30. ^ The Goethezeitportal: Goethe's Italian Journey, Padua. In: goethezeitportal.de. Retrieved April 18, 2018 .
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  52. ↑ Dal convegno su Prato: "Si ripensi il progetto" - Legambiente Padova. In: legambientepadova.it. December 2, 2010, accessed April 16, 2018 (Italian).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 22, 2019 .

Coordinates: 45 ° 23 '54 "  N , 11 ° 52' 35"  E