The decorations of the Aula Magna are quite breathtaking but once over the initial surprise, we should focus on an apparently unassuming inscription at the centre of the podium. This is the University of Padua’s motto and it reads: “Universa Universis Patavina Libèrtas” (“freedom in Padua is everywhere and for everyone”).

In 1405, when the city came under the dominion of the Republic of Venice, the university managed to obtain some independence and even the monopoly for universities in the Venetian state. Paradoxically, the loss of the city’s autonomy became the most solid guarantee of academic liberty.

The University is celebrated by a large ceiling fresco commissioned by the Rector Giuseppe de Menghin in the mid-1800s. Here Wisdom and the Faculties are surrounded by portraits of illustrious figures like Galileo, Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Cardinal Zabarella, and the jurist Emo, one of the university’s founders.

Then the podium and faculty seats were designed by Gio Ponti in 1942, part of the twentieth-century renovation commissioned by Rector Carlo Anti. Student coats of arms of different historical periods are hung in eye-catching disorder on the walls.