Off  the A4, 32 km west of Venice. Galileo lectured at its university, Palladio the architect was born here, even the city walls were designed by scholars. Giotto’s frescos in the Scrovegni chapel (it was donated by a sort of medieval scrap-metal millionaire; Scrovegni – ‘Scruffy’ – was his nickname) and Donatello’s ponderous equestrian statue outside the Duomo are the supreme treasures of this ‘City of the Saint’ (Anthony, patron of all Italy).

Padua’s busy traffic weaves round the chalk-white statuary of the Prato della Valle, over old bridges and sub-terranean canals, down cobbled porticoed lanes, past smart dress shops and piazzettas of small trades, especially shoemaking, the traditional occupation.

There are industrial estates too, and at night the neon signs of Alfa-Romeo, Lanerossi, Bira Peroni and Pirelli compete with the floodlighting on the Duomo’s clustering domes and the Torre Orologio. The latter contains a clock so ingeniously constructed that the city fathers put its inventor to death to keep it exclusive. On the pretext of making a final adjustment before they hanged him, he climbed the Tower and twiddled a screw and the clock never chimed again.