Padua's Palazzo della Ragione is the big hall that sits between the two market squares, Piazza delle Erbe and Piazza della Frutta, and it has done that job since the early thirteenth century, when the city was a self-governing commune and wanted a building big enough for its courts. The enormous upper hall, with a roof shaped like an upturned ship's keel, is said to be one of the largest medieval halls in Europe, its walls covered in astrological frescoes and a giant wooden horse standing at one end. Downstairs the arcades still house butchers, cheesemongers and cafes, which is the best sign that the building has remained a living part of town.
The chapel in the label presumably belongs to the Carraresi, the family who ruled Padua in the fourteenth century before Venice absorbed it, and their taste can still be seen across the old centre. The university, one of the oldest in the world, was founded in 1222, and Galileo taught here for eighteen years. Students are why the lanes around the squares are lively into the night, with spritz bars filling the pavements by early evening.
For riders, Padua is a day of walking and eating, not riding. The centre is a limited traffic zone, so leave the bike on the outskirts, where there are paid parking areas for motorbikes, and walk in. Padua is a big city with all services, so fuel and coffee are never a problem, but the ring roads and the Veneto plain around it are flat, busy and not fun. If you want a ride, go south-west to the Euganean Hills, a cluster of old volcanic cones rising abruptly from the plain, with winding roads, vineyards and medieval villages like Arquà Petrarca, where the poet Petrarch spent his last years and died in 1374.
The Euganean roads are narrow and twisty, with a few hairpins and surprisingly steep gradients, and cyclists use them in numbers, so stay patient on weekends. The best seasons are spring and autumn, with clear air from the Alps and the hills at their greenest or golden.