The New Courtyard

The twentieth-century wing of Palazzo del Bo finds its fulcrum in the Cortile Nuovo, originally called Cortile Littorio, characterized by a quadrangular portico with imposing and essential shapes.

The project is the work of the Veronese architect Ettore Fagiuoli who, commissioned by the Rector Carlo Anti, conceived this space as a place intended to celebrate the fighting spirit of the students of the University.

Above the eastern colonnade is the relief by Attilio Selva, entitled The voluntaristic spirit of Paduan goliardia from 1848 onwards. In the centre of the scene, on a column, were originally engraved four commemorative dates: 1848 (the Risorgimento), 1918 (the Great War), 1922 (the Fascist Revolution) and 1939 (the conquest of Ethiopia). A fifth space, left empty, was supposed to accommodate the date of the victory in the Second World War. After the war, the inscriptions were removed, while the figurative part of the relief was preserved intact, which has come down to us in its original form.

Made in 1942, Paolo Boldrin's Victorious Minerva was originally placed in the nearby Atrium of Heroes. The removal of the memorial plaque dedicated to the students who died for the Fascist cause and the new arrangement of the statue on the back wall of the Ancient Courtyard have helped to soften the triumphalist tones that accompanied the work at the time of its creation.

In the same sector of the courtyard is the Porta della Vacca, the ancient sixteenth-century entrance to the University, once located in the Ancient Courtyard along Via delle Beccherie (now Via Cesare Battisti).

Among the most recent works placed in the New Courtyard, evidence of the continuity of the University's role as an art commissioner, are the bronze and granite stele Spirale by Galileo Galilei, created by Giò Pomodoro in 1992 to celebrate the four hundred years of Galileo's course unit at the chair of mathematics, and Resistance and Liberation, a masterpiece of 1995 by Jannis Kounellis dedicated to Concetto Marchesi, Egidio Meneghetti and Ezio Franceschini: an intense tribute to all those who sacrificed themselves for freedom from the fascist regime.

Today, in the Atrium of the Heroes, a large stone stele commemorates the 116 fallen of the University in the fight against Nazi-fascism, including 107 students, such as Lodovico Todesco and Primo Visentin, the latter portrayed in the Palinuro sculpture by Arturo Martini, placed at the foot of the Staircase of Knowledge of Palazzo Bo.