Church of the Eremitani Site Features

The church is a wide single nave under a wooden ceiling shaped like an inverted ship's hull -- the same carpentry logic as the Palazzo della Ragione's roof, applied at smaller scale and for the same reason: it spans a broad space without internal supports.

The exterior is plain brick with a simple gabled front, typical of mendicant building where preaching space mattered more than display.

The Ovetari Chapel sits off the east end. Its reconstruction is deliberately legible: recovered fragments are set against neutral ground rather than infilled with painted guesswork, so what survives and what is lost remain distinguishable.

The two surviving Mantegna scenes

The Assumption and a fragment of the Martyrdom of St Christopher, alive today only because they had been removed for restoration before the bombing.

The reassembled fragments

Thousands of pieces returned to position by a decades-long recovery project. Seen against the blank ground around them, they are as much a record of the loss as of the painting.

Guariento's apse frescoes

14th-century work that survived the raid largely intact, and the most complete medieval painting in the building.

The ship's-keel ceiling

A broad timber vault over the whole nave, rebuilt after the war to the original form.

The church stands at the northern edge of Padua's historic centre, sharing a site with the Musei Civici and the Scrovegni Chapel, on the remains of the Roman arena. Almost everyone who visits the Scrovegni walks within thirty metres of the Eremitani's door; most do not go in.

The proximity to the railway is what destroyed it. The 1944 raid was aimed at the marshalling yards a few hundred metres north.