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Piazza del Santo and the basilica
Apart from the encampment of stalls selling decorated candles and outsize souvenir rosaries, the main sight of the Piazza del Santo, a 10min walk south, is Donatello's Monument to Gattamelata (which translates literally as "The Honeyed Cat"), as the condottiere Erasmo da Narni was known. He died in 1443 and this monument was raised ten years later, the earliest large bronze sculpture of the Renaissance. A direct precursor to Verrocchio's monument to Colleoni in Venice, it could hardly be more different: Gattemelata was known for his honesty and dignity, and Donatello has given us an image of comparative sensitivity and restraint, quite unlike Verrocchio's image of power through force. The modelling of the horse makes a double allusion: to the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, and to the horses of San Marco.
Within eighteen months of his death, St Anthony had been canonized and his tomb was attracting enough pilgrims to warrant the building of the Basilica di San Antonio, or Il Santo (daily: summer 6.30am-7.45pm; winter 6.30am-7pm). It was not until the start of the fourteenth century that the church reached a state that enabled the saint's body to be placed in the Cappella del Santo (in the left transept). Plastered with such votive offerings as photographs of limbs healed by the saint's intervention, the shrine is irresistible to the voyeur. The chapel's more formal decoration, quite ignored by the religiose and voyeuristic alike, includes the most important series of relief sculpture created in sixteenth-century Italy, a sequence of nine marble panels showing scenes from the life of St Anthony. Carved between 1505 and 1577, most have the names of their sculptors incised into the base, Antonio Lombardo, Tullio Lombardo and Jacopo Sansovino being among the most famous.
Adjoining the chapel is the Cappella della Madonna Mora (named after its fourteenth-century French altar statue), which in turn gives onto the Cappella del Beato Luca, whose fourteenth-century frescoes include a lovely image of St James lifting a prison tower to free a prisoner. Back in the aisle, just outside the Cappella del Santo, is Padua's finest work by Pietro Lombardo, the monument to Antonio Roselli (1467). More impressive still are the high altar's bronze sculptures and reliefs by Donatello (1444-45), the works that introduced Renaissance classicism to Padua. Built onto the farthest point of the ambulatory, the Cappella del Tesoro (daily 7am-1pm & 2.30-7pm) houses the tongue and vocal chords of St Anthony, as well as a host of lesser relics. For more on St Anthony and the basilica, enter the cloisters (on the south side of the basilica) and follow the signs for the Museo Antoniano (summer daily 9am-1pm & 2.30-6.30pm; winter Tues-Fri 10am-1pm & 2-5pm, Sat & Sun 9am-1pm & 2-5pm; L5000/?2.58), which includes the Mostra Antoniana (closes 30min earlier; free). The former, on the first floor, is a collection of paintings (including the fresco of St Anthony and St Bernardino by Mantegna ), ornate incense holders, ceremonial robes and other paraphernalia linked to the basilica; the latter, on the ground floor, is a history of votive gifts.
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