Scrovegni Chapel Site Features

The fresco cycle

Giotto's cycle covers the chapel's walls and ceiling in 39 main scenes, arranged in three horizontal bands that run around the room -- the top band depicts the life of Joachim and Anna (the Virgin Mary's parents), the middle band the life of Mary herself, and the lower band the life and Passion of Christ. A deep blue, star-studded ceiling, one of the most photographed details in the chapel, unifies the whole space above the narrative bands.

The Last Judgment

The entire entrance wall is given over to a single monumental Last Judgment, with Christ enthroned at the center, the saved rising toward heaven, and a vividly imagined hell -- the same wall on which Enrico Scrovegni's own portrait appears, presenting a model of the chapel to the Virgin.

The chapel sits within the Giardini dell'Arena (Arena Gardens), a small public park in central Padua that traces the outline of the Roman arena the chapel itself was built against -- a rare case of a building's footprint directly recording the shape of the much older structure it replaced.

The adjoining Musei Civici degli Eremitani, Padua's civic museum complex, sits immediately next to the chapel, and a combined ticket typically covers both.