To the city's south west lies the Euganaean Hills, which feature in poems by Lucan, Martial, Petrarch, Ugo Foscolo, and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

According to a tradition dated at least to the time of Virgil's Aeneid and to Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, Padua was founded around 1183 BC by the Trojan prince Antenor.

[6] After the Fall of Troy, Antenor led a group of Trojans and their Paphlagonian allies, the Eneti or Veneti, who lost their king Pylaemenes to settle the Euganean plain in Italy.

An inscription by the native humanist scholar Lovato Lovati placed near the tomb reads: This sepulchre excavated from marble contains the body of the noble Antenor who left his country, guided the Eneti and Trojans, banished the Euganeans and founded Padua.

By the 5th century BC, Padua, rose on the banks of the river Brenta, which in the Roman era was called Medoacus Maior and probably until AD 589 followed the path of the present-day Bacchiglione (Retrone).

According to Livy and Silius Italicus, the Veneti, including those of Padua, formed an alliance with the Romans by 226 BC against their common enemies, first the Gauls and then the Carthaginians.

Nearby Abano was the birthplace, and after many years spent in Rome, the death place of Livy, whose Latin was said by the critic Asinius Pollio to betray his Patavinitas (q.v.

[dubious – discuss] The townspeople fled to the hills and later returned to eke out a living among the ruins; the ruling class abandoned the city for the Venetian Lagoon, according to a chronicle.

[citation needed] The city did not easily recover from this blow, and Padua was still weak when the Franks succeeded the Lombards as masters of northern Italy.

In 1236 Frederick II found little difficulty in establishing his vicar Ezzelino III da Romano in Padua and the neighbouring cities, where he practised frightful cruelties on the inhabitants.

[16] From then till 1405, nine members of the Carraresi family, including Ubertino, Jacopo II, and Francesco il Vecchio, succeeded one another as lords of the city, with the exception of a brief period of Scaligeri overlordship between 1328 and 1337 and two years (1388–1390) when Giangaleazzo Visconti held the town.

Under Carraresi rule the early humanist circles in the university were effectively disbanded: Albertino Mussato, the first modern poet laureate, died in exile at Chioggia in 1329, and the eventual heir of the Paduan tradition was the Tuscan Petrarch.

On 10 December 1508, representatives of the Papacy, France, the Holy Roman Empire, and Ferdinand V of Castile concluded the League of Cambrai against the Republic.

Austrian rule was unpopular with progressive circles in northern Italy, but the feelings of the population (from the lower to the upper classes) towards the empire were mixed.

The revolt was however short-lived, and there were no other episodes of unrest under the Austrian Empire (nor previously had there been any), as in Venice or in other parts of Italy; while opponents of Austria were forced into exile.

In the years immediately following World War I, Padua developed outside the historical town, enlarging and growing in population, even if labor and social strife were rampant at the time.

The city was shaken by strikes and clashes, factories and fields were subject to occupation, and war veterans struggled to re-enter civilian life.

Following Italy's defeat in the Second World War on 8 September 1943, Padua became part of the Italian Social Republic, a puppet state of the Nazi occupiers.

[20] During one of these bombings, the Church of the Eremitani, with frescoes by Andrea Mantegna, was destroyed, considered by some art historians to be Italy's biggest wartime cultural loss.

The list of notable professors and alumni is long, containing, among others, the names of Bembo, Sperone Speroni, the anatomist Vesalius, Copernicus, Fallopius, Fabrizio d'Acquapendente, Galileo Galilei, William Harvey, Pietro Pomponazzi, Reginald, later Cardinal Pole, Scaliger, Tasso and Jan Zamoyski.

The Senate of the Venetian republic decided that knowledge of herbal remedies would reduces errors made by pharmacists, so the garden was built.

The presence of the university attracted many distinguished artists, such as Giotto, Fra Filippo Lippi and Donatello; and for native art there was the school of Francesco Squarcione, whence issued Mantegna.

The sculptor Antonio Canova produced his first work in Padua, one of which is among the statues of Prato della Valle (presently a copy is displayed in the open air, while the original is in the Musei Civici).

Paolo De Poli, painter and enamellist, author of decorative panels and design objects, 15 times invited to the Venice Biennale was born in Padua.

Padua hosts consulates for several nations, including those of Canada, Croatia, Ivory Coast, Peru, Poland, Switzerland and Uruguay.

In the industrial zone, there are two railway stations, one fluvial port, three truck terminals, two highway exits and a lot of connected services, such as hotels, post offices and directional centres.

[35] By car, there are 2 motorways (autostrade in Italian): A4 Brescia-Padova, connecting it to Verona (then to Brenner Pass, Innsbruck and Bavaria) and Milan (then Switzerland, Turin and France); A4 Padova-Venezia, to Venice then Belluno (for Dolomites holiday resorts like Cortina) Trieste and Tarvisio (for Austria, Slovenia, Croatia and Eastern Europe); A13 Bologna-Padova, to Ferrara and Bologna (then Central and South Italy).

The station was opened in 1842 when the service started on the first part of the Milan–Venice railway (the "Imperial Regia Ferrovia Ferdinandea") built from Padua to Marghera through Mestre.

The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Padova, Vicenza e Verona, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 46 min.

Italy international rugby players Mauro and Mirco Bergamasco, Marco Bortolami, Andrea Marcato and Leonardo Ghiraldini were all born in Padua.