University of Padua: Palazzo Bo and the Anatomical Theatre

When the migration from Bologna arrived in 1222, Padua granted the scholars what they had failed to secure at home: freedom from both civic and ecclesiastical interference, written into the studium's charter and later carved over the palace gate as Universa universis patavina libertas — Paduan freedom for everyone, everywhere. That legal novelty attracted the century's boldest minds. Copernicus studied canon law here in the early 1500s; Vesalius dissected and wrote here; William Harvey took his degree in 1602; and from 1592 to 1610 Galileo Galilei held the mathematics chair, earning (as the story goes) the highest salary any professor had been paid up to that time.

The university bought the inn called the Hospitium Bovis — the Ox — in 1539 and grew the palace around its two courtyards over the following centuries. The sixteenth-century Cortile Antico became a trophy wall: graduating students and nations affixed painted and carved coats of arms until thousands of them covered the arcades, a custom that gives the courtyard its peculiar gallery effect today. After bomb damage in the Second World War, the architect Gio Ponti redesigned the twentieth-century wing, which the weekend tours include. The palace remains a working rectorate, which is why rooms can close at short notice for ceremonies.

• 1222: the studium is founded by scholars moving from Bologna.
• 1539: the university acquires the Hospitium Bovis, the palace's nucleus.
• 1594-1595: the world's first permanent anatomical theatre is built inside the palace.
• 1592-1610: Galileo teaches mathematics here; his lectern survives in the Sala dei Quaranta.
• 1678: Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia becomes the first woman in the world to receive a degree.

The standard Giro storico is a fixed 45-minute circuit led by a guide (often a trained student), and it moves through the rooms below. Not every room is guaranteed every day — university ceremonies take priority — but the anatomical theatre is the fixed point of every visit.

The anatomical theatre of 1594-1595

Six concentric elliptical wooden galleries rise around a dissecting table in a narrow vertical room, built so that two hundred students could watch a public dissection without obstructing each other. It is the oldest permanent anatomical theatre surviving anywhere — earlier structures were temporary — and it functioned for dissection teaching until the nineteenth century. You look down into it from the upper tiers: climbing on the galleries is not allowed, the visit is taken standing, and photographs without flash are fine for personal use.

Galileo's lectern in the Sala dei Quaranta

The Sala dei Quaranta is frescoed with the coats of arms of forty foreign students chosen to represent the university's international reach, and against one wall stands the plain wooden lectern (la cattedra) from which Galileo lectured during his eighteen years in Padua. The room is small; your guide will move groups through in halves at busy times.

The Cortile Antico and the Law courtyard rooms

The sixteenth-century courtyard is the palace's photograph: two arcaded storeys hung with hundreds of student coats of arms. Off it, the circuit includes the Law faculty's historic lecture hall and the Aula Magna, the grand ceremonial hall rebuilt after wartime damage. The tour also passes the statue of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, whose 1678 doctorate in philosophy is commemorated on the courtyard floor.

Practical booking notes

Tickets are sold at the palace ticket office in the corridor between the two courtyards (Monday-Friday 10:00-18:00, weekends and holidays 09:00-18:00) and online through the university's booking platform. The booking centre answers on 049 827 3939 daily 09:00-17:00 and at [email protected]. Paid bookings cannot be modified, cancelled or refunded, and the visit is taken standing — there is nowhere to sit.