The bluest blue I’ve ever seen

And other observations my daughter made during a quick morning trip to Padua from Venice

The Scrovegni Chapel was commissioned by Enrico degli Scrovegni, a Paduan lender. It is considered one of the masterpieces of Western art. Giotto di Bondone, considered the first of the Italian masters, painted the frescoes in the intimate space. Giotto, (1276–1337), is considered the most important Italian painter of the 14th century. “His works point to the innovations of the Renaissance style, which developed a century later,” according to Encyclopedia Britannica. Photograph: Katherine Yung

My daughter spent three months living in Venice in 2017 as an intern at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a small, yet world-renowned modern art museum located on the Grand Canal. Her time there was magical, challenging, beautiful, and life-changing. On four occasions, she daytripped with her friends away from the 124 islands that compose Venice to visit these cities: Bologna, Padua, Verona, and Vicenza. One day, she travelled to Ravenna with my husband, our son and me when we visited over spring break.

Since her return, we’ve enjoyed many conversations about her time in Italy. In this and future posts, I’ll be relaying the details of each of these short excursions. This post is about her morning trip to Padua, a city that claims to be the oldest city in northern Italy. It’s a short 26 miles from Venice.

The interview answers are just the two of us talking; see the photo captions for more detailed notes and facts about her trip.

How did you travel to Padua? We left from the Venice train station at 9 a.m. It took barely thirty minutes to get there.

What was the most important thing you saw in Padua? Our goal in going to Padua — or Padova, as the Italians say — was to see the Scrovegni Chapel. It’s covered on the inside with many famous frescoes by Giotto. He was a painter during the Middle Ages. He was known for the expressions he painted on people. The frescoes in the chapel are literally in every art history textbook I’ve ever seen. The chapel is extremely small and from floor to ceiling it’s jammed with frescoes.

Another view of the floor-to-ceiling frescoes painted by Giotto at the Scrovegni Chapel. Giotto is considered pre-Renaissance; his work takes a step away from the Medieval style. Photo: Katherine Yung

Did the chapel meet your expectations? Yes! It was exactly what I hoped it would be. Giotto was known for using blue and the frescoes there were way more intensely vibrant than I expected them to be. The color was the bluest blue I’ve ever seen.

Before you even enter the chapel, it must be readied by the staff. They adjust the humidity level in order to control the air quality inside and they also regulate your entrance time because the air quality must be adjusted to protect the frescoes. Many of them are fragile. Some are entirely gone. Some are faded and chipping away. They were completed in 1305, so that explains the deterioration.

This photo shows the most famous fresco (center) in the Scrovegni Chapel entitled “Lamentation of Christ.” The anguish in the facial expressions of the figures is one characteristic that makes this fresco so well-known. Photograph: Katherine Yung

The gardens and grounds that surrounded the Scrovegni Chapel were lush with the spring season in Padua. Photo: Katherine Yung

Where did you go after the Scrovegni? We went to Chiesa degli Eremitani, literally the Church of the Hermits, which was a religious order under St. Augustine. It’s a very tall church with a woven, wooden lattice roof. There are frescoed bricks on the wall. At the front where the altar is, there are two or three little chapels. There are interesting frescoes that go up into the domes, but only to a point.

The church was bombed in World War II and they were almost totally destroyed. Over the years, the building has been renovated. There are fragmented frescoes where black paint has been applied showing what the image would have been had it not been bombed.

Inside the Chiesa degli Eremitani, the frescoes show scenes from the life of St. Augustine. The damage done to this church is considered by art historians to be Italy’s “greatest artistic wartime loss.” Photo: Katherine Yung

This photo shows the devastation of the bombing from 1944. The frescoes covered the entire dome of the church, which was removed by the bombing. Now blank, unpainted areas remain. Photo: Katherine Yung

Fragments from the destroyed frescoes have been found over the years and inserted onto the plaster in the precise spots where they were believed to have been placed originally. Photo: Katherine Yung

Did you grab a meal while you were there? Yes, after the Chiesa, we ran to get pizza somewhere on the way to the train station. We also managed to find an American coffee shop and I ordered a chai tea latte for the first time while I was in Italy. Chai tea is not a thing in Italy, by the way.

That was also about the time we realized we had bought the wrong returning ticket to Venice. We made our way onto the next train back, but didn’t have time to purchase tickets. It was a confusing ordeal. We planned to pay while we were on board the train, but no one ever checked our tickets.

We made it back to Venice by 2 in the afternoon, which was around the time we were scheduled to get ready to tour Damien Hirst’s mammoth exhibition, which is totally another story.

Would you like to go back to Padua since you were only there for a few hours? Yes, of course, it would be great to go back. There are so many things I know we just didn’t have time for. One would be the Basilica of Saint Anthony. Someday… someday.

I make no apologies. As a writer and parent, I feel perfectly entitled to take full advantage of my daughter’s experience in Italy by wringing every possible story idea from it! Yes, our family did visit her there for a week, and while we saw so much in that time, we envied the luxury of time her three-month internship allowed. Check out my other articles below and follow me for more stories about my daughter’s daytrips around northern Italy.

Verona is the bomb dot com

One way up and one way down: the “freaking tall” towers of Bologna

Yes, send your daughter to Italy. Alone.