Basilica di Santa Giustina

Facing Prato della Valle, the Basilica of Santa Giustina is a vast Benedictine church with a 122-metre Latin-cross plan and eight domes. Built over successive places of worship associated with the martyr Justina, it also preserves the tomb of Saint Luke the Evangelist and the remains of Saint Matthias.

Why it matters

The present basilica is a sixteenth-century rebuilding on a site with a long Christian history. The church was enlarged over earlier structures and preserves the remains of Saint Justina, martyred in 304, as well as the relics of Saints Luke and Matthias. At 122 metres long, it is the largest church in Padua. Its scale, unfinished façade and sequence of domes make it one of the defining landmarks of the city and a major Benedictine abbey church.

What to notice

In the left transept is the arca of Saint Luke, whose relics were brought from Thebes through Constantinople to Padua. The right transept holds the tomb of the apostle Matthias. The Corridor of the Martyrs leads to the Greek-cross chapel built over the tomb of Saint Prosdocimus, traditionally venerated as Padua’s first bishop. The fourteenth-century Chapel of Saint Luke contains the tomb of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman to receive a university doctorate, in 1678. In the apse, Paolo Veronese’s Martyrdom of Saint Justina, painted in 1575, hangs above fifteenth-century choir stalls.

Context and history

A succession of churches has occupied the site since late antiquity. The earlier basilica was damaged in the 1117 earthquake, and the present building arose during the sixteenth-century reconstruction. Benedictine monks arrived in the tenth century; later recovery and veneration of relics linked the abbey with Saint Justina and Saint Luke. Napoleon suppressed the monastery in 1810, and its buildings served as barracks until the Benedictines returned in 1919. The basilica forms one part of a larger abbey complex whose history is closely tied to the city’s religious and civic life.