Padova.it Agriturismo Padova

History of Padua

Padua claims to be the oldest city in north Italy; the early medieval commune justified itself by a fabled founder in the Trojan Antenor, whose relics the commune recognized in a large stone sarcophagus exhumed in the year 1274. The historical Padua inhabited by Veneti thrived thanks to its excellent breed of horses and the wool of its sheep. Its men fought for the Romans at Cannae, and the city (a Roman municipium since 45 BCE (query 43?)) became so powerful that it was reported able to raise two hundred thousand fighting men. Abano nearby is the birthplace of the historian Livy, and Padua was the native place of Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus and Thrasea Paetus. Padua, in common with north-eastern Italy, suffered severely from the invasion of the Huns under Attila (452). It then passed under the Gothic kings Odoacer and Theodoric the Great, but during the Gothic War it made submission to the Greeks in 540. The city was seized again by the Goths under Totila, but was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narses in 568.

The history of Padua after Late Antiquity follows the course of events common to most cities of north-eastern Italy.