Giotto painted the Scrovegni Chapel in about two years, between 1303 and 1305, and it changed how Europeans drew people. Before him faces were icons; here they are tired, tender, furious, ashamed. The chapel was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, whose father Reginaldo was a moneylender so notorious that Dante put him in hell. Enrico built the chapel beside the family palace, so the story goes, to ease his father's soul, and the result is a small brick box covered inside with a blue ceiling of gold stars and thirty-odd scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ, ending with a vast Last Judgment on the west wall.
Visits are strictly timed. You wait in a climate-controlled room for a quarter of an hour so the air in the chapel stays stable, then you are let in for a short slot, which means booking ahead is wise, especially in spring and early autumn. Next door is the Church of the Eremitani, built by Augustinian friars in the thirteenth century, with a great wooden ship-keel ceiling. In March 1944 an Allied bombing raid destroyed the Ovetari chapel here, along with the early frescoes of the young Mantegna. Fragments were painstakingly recovered, and what you see now is a patient jigsaw, which gives the church a sad, serious dignity.
Padua is a big city with all the services a rider needs, so fuel and food are simple, though the centre is a restricted traffic zone and the best plan is to park at the edge and walk the short distance. Do not try to ride through the lanes by Prato della Valle at midday, because the one-way pattern and the trams are baffling.
For the ride out, the ride list pairs this stop with Palladio's Villa Saraceno at Agugliaro, which lies south-west of Padua on the edge of the Berici hills, a gentle land of flat fields and low wooded ridges. The roads between are quiet country lanes through vineyards and maize, with some traffic on the provincial roads and fog in late autumn and winter. Spring and early autumn offer the best light, and a spritz in the old squares after the chapel visit is a fair reward.