Palace of Reason

With its 82 meters long and 27 meters wide, the Salòn or Palace of Reason (Palazzo della Ragione), the ancient seat of the city courts of Padua, is one of the largest suspended classrooms in Europe.

Recognized as one of the most famous civil monuments erected in Europe at the time of the Municipalities, the building was raised from 1218. Between 1306 and 1308, Fra Giovanni degli Eremitani transformed the three large rooms into which the upper floor was divided in a single room, creating a new cover in the shape of an overturned ship's hull.

At the turn of the first decade of the fourteenth century Giotto and his shop were entrusted with the task of frescoing the walls of the great hall, however the cycle was destroyed by the fire which in 1420 sent the Carraresi archive to ashes.

The frescoes were restored by the Paduan master Nicolo 'Miretto with the collaboration of Stefano da Ferrara and other painters based on the studies of Pietro d'Abano, a wealthy scholar of his time.

The cycle of frescoes is divided into 333 squares, takes place on three overlapping bands, and is one of the very rare medieval astrological cycles that have survived to the present day.

The close relationship between the paintings and the function of the place that hosted them explains the presence of the various figures of animals, sometimes fantastic, which constituted the insignia of the seats of the court, to whose function are also connected the allegories of Justice, of Law, of the Municipality in Signoria and the frescoes depicting the Judgment of Solomon and the trial scene.