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The area was originally the site of a Roman theater and later a marshy, flood-prone market ground known as the Campo Marzio, used inconsistently over the centuries for markets, fairs, and public events on ground too unstable for permanent building.
In 1775, the Venetian nobleman and reformer Andrea Memmo, then serving as a Venetian official in Padua, drained and redesigned the site into its current form -- an elliptical island, since named Isola Memmia in his honor, surrounded by a canal fed by the nearby Bacchiglione River. The redesign transformed unusable marshland into one of the largest planned public spaces in 18th-century Europe.
Andrea Memmo conceived and carried out the square's transformation, and its ring of statues was populated over subsequent decades with figures tied to Padua's own history -- scholars, churchmen, and civic leaders connected to the city and its university, one of the oldest in the world.
The statue ring has changed since the 18th century -- a number of statues originally depicting Venetian doges were removed and replaced following Venice's fall to Napoleon in 1797, when the political symbolism of celebrating Venetian rulers no longer fit the moment, leaving the current collection weighted more toward Paduan scholars and citizens.
Prato della Valle remains one of Padua's principal public gathering spaces, hosting markets, fairs, and events on a scale its 18th-century size was specifically designed to accommodate.