A Meadow For The Valley

Prato della Valle fascinates for its particular structure and becomes almost a fountain in the wonderful frame of the Square, to the eyes of the Traveller.

Designed in the eighteenth century, owes its transformation to the figure of the Venetian politician and man of letters Andrea Memmo who had the merit of bringing together in his project the need for a sanitation of the area on which weighed disruption of the ground, and the enhancement of the square for commercial purposes.

Memmo worked on the project in order to be able to give the city a place where to hold fairs and commercial events that traditionally found their calendar in the city, even if many unflattering rumors suggest instead that he had thought of the area as a place where to hold agonistic shows with boats and carriages. However, the project underwent a considerable downsizing as a result of numerous difficulties that Memmo encountered along the way.

Having finally brought a large load of soil specifically for the filling of the central area of the canal, Memmo was able to take away a good part of the Prato from the water, giving the Padovani an almost fantastic place, adorned with rings of statues and bridges. The same statues, moreover, follow an eighteenth-century edict by which they could not depict either saints or the living, but had instead to pay tribute to the city the merit of personalities linked to it for literature, trade or other disciplines.

Still today Prato della Valle manages to intrigue those who cross it and linger in the shadow of the sculptures, looking at the water and not being able to imagine the transformation it underwent over the centuries.

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