Padua

Padua (Italian Padova) is a city and comune in the autonomous region of Veneto in northern Italy and the capital of the province of Padua. It lies on the banks of the river Bacchiglione, 40 kilometres west of Venice and 29 kilometres southeast of Vicenza, and with a population of 208,202 as of 2026 it is the third-largest city in Veneto and the economic and communications hub of its area. Padua has two UNESCO World Heritage entries, its Botanical Garden, the oldest in the world, and its 14th-century frescoes including the Scrovegni Chapel. It is home to the University of Padua, founded in 1222, where Galileo Galilei and Nicolaus Copernicus taught or studied; Galileo observed the moons of Jupiter from the city in 1610. In this atlas it is the seat of the University of Padua, the institution where the mathematician Giovanni Poleni, builder of an early pinwheel calculator, held his chairs.