Padua > Padova Veneto Italy

Ariulf, who in 592 succeeds Farolald I to become the second Duke of Spoleto, a duchy that controls key points along the Via Flaminia, the key communication between Ravenna and Rome.

Seeking to cut its alternative, the fortified Via Amerina, Ariulf captures several imperial cities.

He takes several strongholds in Latium and threatens Rome, where Pope Gregory, cut off from the Exarchate, is forced to make a separate peace with him, to the intense dissatisfaction of Romanus (exarch), Exarch of Ravenna, who considers himself the Imperial representative in Italy and the popes' superior.

Ariulf's successes are brief: …

…Agilulf invades the Exarchate, destroying Patavium, …

…to divide the Paduan district among themselves.

The citizens, in order to protect their liberties, are obliged to elect a podestà.

Their choice had first fallen on one of the Este family.

A fire devastates Padua in 1174, necessitating the virtual rebuilding of the city.

The University of Padua, Italy’s second, is founded in 1222 when a large group of students and professors leave the University of Bologna in search of more academic freedom ('Libertas scholastica').

The first subjects to be taught are law and theology.

Frederick receives the news of his excommunication by Gregory IX in the first months of 1239 while his court is in Padua.

The emperor responds by expelling the Minorites and the Preachers from Lombardy, and electing his son Enzio as Imperial vicar for Northern Italy.

…the podestà of Padua from 1237, through his regent Ansedisio Guidotti.

Ezzolino is excommunicated in 1254, four years after Frederick II's death, by Pope Innocent IV, who also launches a crusade against him.

Ezzolino reconciles with his brother and allies with other seignors of the Veneto and Lombardy, attacking Padua, which resists, and …

Giotto frescoes almost the entire inner surface of the Arena Chapel of Padua for the wealthy Enrico Scrovegni, whom Giotto portrays at the bottom of a depiction of the Last Judgment covering the entrance wall, showing the donor presenting the chapel, in the form of a model, to the Virgin.

Completed round 1305, three ranges of paintings on the other walls dramatically narrate the life of the Virgin and of Christ.

Giotto arranges his subjects across the surface of each scene and within a shallow stage-like space to attain a climactic visual focus.

In his famous scene of the “Lamentation,” somber, block-like figures surround the body of Christ within the space while all the painting’s secondary elements—glances and gestures and even the diagonal line of the hill—direct the viewers’ gaze to Mary’s embrace of the dead Jesus.

In these frescoes, Giotto introduces a psychology of relationships in his representation of human facial and body movements, returning the pictorial depth and narrative interest of classical art to the painting of murals.

Ghibelline leader Can Grande della Scala, the chief lord of the mercantile Scala family of Verona and Vicenza, has conquered many cities, including Padua, …

…the ruling family, the Carraresi, offers him the use of their palace in Venice.

Amadeus and the main army arrive on June 8 at Venice, where the Venetians, informed that the crusade is not directed at the Holy Land, offer more assistance, including ships and men if the crusaders will take Tenedos from the Genoese (which they will not).

The departure of the fleet takes place around June 21.