Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Prato della Valle , claimed to be the largest town square in Italy, is a generally cheerless area, ringed by over-wide roads, but the vast Saturday market and the summer funfair do a lot to make it jollier. One side is fronted by the sixteenth-century Basilica di Santa Giustina (summer regular 8.30am-noon & 3-7pm; winter Mon-Fri closes 5.30pm, Sat closes 6.45pm, Sun closes 7.30pm). A pair of fifteenth-century griffins, one holding a knight and the other a lion, are the only notable adornments to the unclad brick facade; the freezing interior has little of interest except a huge Martyrdom of St Justina by Paolo Veronese (in the apse), some highly proficient carving on the choir stalls, and the sarcophagus which once contained the relics of Luke the Evangelist (apse of left transept).

More appealing are the vestiges of the church’s early incarnations. In the right transept a stone arch opens onto the Martyrs’ Corridor , a composite of fifth- to twelfth-century architectural fragments that leads to the Sacellum di Santa Maria e San Prosdocimo , burial place of St Prosdocimus. He was the first bishop of Padua back in the fourth century, when the church was founded, and is depicted here on a fifth-century panel. The fifteenth-century old choir , reached by a chain of corridors from the left-hand chapel of the right transept, has choir stalls inset with splendid marquetry panels.

Tags: italy, prato della valle, santa giustina, saturday market, sixteenth century