Francesco Petrarca, alias Petrarch for foreigners, was one of the most popular poets during the Italian Renaissance. He spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat.
Finally, he found peace in a charming village in the heart of the Euganean Hills: Arquà Petrarca.
Silence is an enchantment
A village built upon a hill side and made by old bricks, colored by the signs of time, Arquà Petrarca is maybe one of the most fascinating places to visit in the suburbs of Padua.
Narrow streets, peculiar glimpses, you will walk under fascinating arches retracing the history of man, till the Bronze age.
In winter, you would appreciate one of the most important gifts this village can offer to tourists: the silence. A rare and precious thing, nowadays. In silence, you can dream and it’s so that poetry begins.
The fog cradles houses like mum’s arms do with a baby. The winter breeze touches bricks which turn red and, suddenly, everything acquires a new scenery. Magic comes into Arquà.
An excellence in tourism
Arquà Petrarca is part of the club The most beautiful villages in Italy (I borghi più belli d’Italia) and it has been awarded the Bandiera arancione (lit. Orange flag) for excellence in tourism, hospitality and the environment.
Within the town boundaries, it lies on the Coast Lake (Laghetto della Costa), one of the Prehistoric Pile Dwellings Around the Alps, since 2011, in the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list.
Petrarch’s house
This Medieval town hosts the exceptional residence of a poet who made history in Italian poetry. In fact, Francesco Petrarca spent the last four years of his life here.
His two floor house doesn’t represent an architectural masterpiece, but you can still breathe old paper scents while walking through its corridors.
Between 1500 and 1600, Paolo Valdezzocco, who became the owner of the house, decided to build a lodge in the Renaissance style and the outdoor staircase. He also ordered to paint the walls with frescoes inspired by Petrarch’s works Il Canzoniere and Africa.
Now, this place of art and meditation has become a museum where you can find Petrarch’s major works and his personal items.
For the adventurers: a route to the Bronze age
Arquà Petrarca is immersed in nature. Actually, you can walk through the Regional Park of Euganean Hills, an originally volcanic area with many climatic conditions and a special ancient human presence.
It’s right here, along the shoreline of Coast Lake, one of the oldest settlements in the world, belonging to the Bronze Age.
Several stilt houses, built with big horizontal oak-wood beams, were supported by piles stuck into the lake mud. To finish these pile-dwellings constructions, our ancestors filled them up with different size branches and big stones.
Villa Barbarigo and its gardens
Not much further from Arquà Petrarca there is another amenity which is worth visiting. It’s Villa Barbarigo, a villa of 1600, set up in a symbolic environment and awarded first prize as the most beautiful garden in Italy in 2003.
It represents the most vast and complete historic gardens in the world; an amazement for the eyes. Think about it, it counts over 60 statues engraved in Istria stone and many other sculptures, streams, waterfalls, fountains, small ponds, water games and fish ponds, between hundreds of different trees and plants, over an area of more than 10 hectares.
This place, full of magic, has symbolism as a leitmotif. There are some tempting benches among wonderful bushes where you can take a rest…if you have an umbrella. Once you sit, water squirts from the ground and will shower you under the sun. So come sit on a bench, in one of the most beautiful parks in Europe.
The aim? You never have to rest when you’re about to reach your goals.
Challenge your orientation in the labyrinth, which represents the windy road of human kind’s progress. Life is made by choices, make yours and baptize yourself in Pila fountain. Then you are ready to exit and reach the “Grand boulevard”.
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