A Continuous String of Onions: Padua Market

In my post On the Pleasure of Old Travel Books I mentioned the writer H.V. Morton’s felicitous comment that the market at Padua was “obviously joined to the Middle Ages by a continuous string of onions”. What I did not mention at the time was that it is one of our favourite markets in Italy, more so even than Campo dei Fiori in Rome.

There are many good reasons to visit Padua, and in my view the principal one is to visit the extraordinarily beautiful Scrovegni Chapel with its frescoes by Giotto. But there is also the botanical garden, founded in 1545 by the University of Padua, part of the formalisation of the study of botany, and to house new specimens being brought to Europe from the New World and Asia.

Actually, most visitors to Padua are probably there to visit the Basilica of one of the most popular saints in the Catholic hagiography, Saint Antony of Padua. Outside the basilica you can see the magnificent bronze statue by Donatello of the condottiere Erasmo di Narni, known to history as Gattamelata or the “honeyed cat”.

And it’s just a really pretty place all round.

But for all its many attractions, we would never visit Padua without going to the market. Not only does Morton’s observation about the sense of historical continuity hold true, but the quality of the produce is outstanding, it sits under, and beside, an extraordinary medieval building called the Palazzo della Ragione (Palace of Reason), and it’s a great place for people-watching.

The market gets going very early and is a heaving mass of activity all morning. Then, after everyone has bought the ingredients for their lunch and is going home to cook it, a miracle happens. Within half an hour or so the shops under the Palazzo are shuttered, the stalls in the piazza outside are folded up and taken away, and before you know it the place is deserted and the sleepy afternoon sets in.

So here is a photographic tribute to the Padua Market.

Next to the market is a pleasant bar where we enjoyed an aperitivo. Later, while at the Basilica of St Antony, I realised that I had mislaid my combined walking stick and camera monopod. I hurried back to the bar, to find that they were keeping it for me behind the counter. When I rejoined Lou, she observed that its recovery was to be expected, because among his other portfolios, St Antony is the patron saint of lost property.