Padua Cathedral and Baptistery

The city's cathedral, with an outstanding Romanesque baptistery covered in 14th-century frescoes

The Cathedral of Padua is a plain, unfinished sixteenth-century church built from a design partly attributed to Michelangelo — substantial but, frankly, not the headline attraction on the square. The real draw is the Baptistery next door, a squat twelfth-century Romanesque building with a low dome.

Step inside and the walls and dome explode in colour. Between 1376 and 1378, the painter Giusto de' Menabuoi covered every surface with a complete cycle of biblical frescoes, ending in an immense Paradise in the dome: Christ in glory surrounded by concentric rings of saints, prophets, and angels. It is a contender for the most beautiful baptistery interior in Italy and almost always quiet.

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A story
The baptistery next to the cathedral was decorated in the 1370s by Giusto de' Menabuoi with a complete cycle of frescoes — Old Testament, New Testament, Apocalypse — culminating in an enormous Paradise of more than a hundred saints arranged in concentric rings around Christ in glory. It is one of the great fresco cycles of medieval Italy and far less crowded than the Scrovegni Chapel.