Discover the city
A real city on a human scale, Padova hosts over 70,000 students in a city of about 210,000 inhabitants: these are the proportions of an ancient university city, where student life and city are intertwined daily.
Their energies merge and give rise to a rich and complex social fabric.
The Youth Friendly Index 2025 of Confartigianato places Padova in seventh place nationally and first in Veneto for job opportunities, training and business. A result that is also confirmed by the employment data, which reaches 78.3 percent in the 20-64 age group.
The squares populated by students, the embankments to run in the open air, the Lungargine Piovego to have an aperitif in summer and a set of cultural, musical and sporting events make the city lively and welcoming and allow you to immerse yourself in places of history, art, beauty, such as the Botanical Garden to which they can access for free.
The student community fills the squares - dei Frutti, delle Erbe, dei Signori, Capitaniato - after class and between one study commitment and another; Piazza Portello is populated at all hours, on days only girls and boys find themselves sitting in Prato della Valle, the Ghetto is teeming with young people at spritz time. At sunset you find yourself sitting on the wall of the Specola or you leave the city and go to the Euganean Hills, a spectacle at that time of day.
Padova is alive at all times and teeming with the life that the student community brings with it.
Padova is also a city full of parks, green areas and cycle paths: more than 200 km that allow you to move every day in a simple way, also thanks to bike and scooter sharing services . When needed, the car is also available thanks to car-sharing stations. There are many possibilities for playing sports, for which the CUS, University Sports Center, offers a wide variety of disciplines, individual and team.
There is no shortage of opportunities to go out, dance, listen to good music, go shopping in shops affiliated with the Studiare a Padova Card. There are also many initiatives to participate at low cost in theatrical performances and concerts, and to party together during the many Unipd or city initiatives
Evidence of a long and rich history, including Unesco sites and extraordinary monuments
Padova is a city rich in history and culture and is campus of two Unesco sites: the Botanical Garden, the oldest university botanical garden in the world and at the origin of all botanical gardens, and Padova Urbs Picta, a series of medieval frescoes that develops in four areas of the historic center of Padova.
With a Roman imprint, its historic center still bears great testimony of this ancient path, from the time of its legendary foundation by the Trojan Antenor, to the Roman Patavium, to the regency of the Carraresi lords in the Middle Ages, and then to the annexation to the Serenissima Republic until the end of the eighteenth century, when it became first French (under Napoleon) and then Austrian, until the annexation to the Kingdom of Italy in 1864.
This rich history of art and architecture is also written in its palaces, churches, cobblestones, Roman and Renaissance double walls.
