The University of Padua, with its 800 years of history, is one of a five-part television series dedicated to the history and story of Italy’s finest universities. Filmed by Aldo Zappalà and Mario Leombruno, the series is entitled Magnifiche. Storia e storie di università takes a closer look into the founding of some of Italy’s most ancient and well-respected institutions of higher education.

The University of Padua is featured in the second television episode and broadcast on Rai Storia on November 15. The episode tells the tale of the stories, the firsts of many of its achievements made over the past eight centuries.  When, in 1222, the Studium Patavinum became notarized with a registered deed, legitimatizing it as an official university organization.

In the year 1200, Pope Innocent III organized the Fourth Crusade, ending the Sack of Constantinople, and leading to the birth of the Eastern Latin Empire.

While waiting to embark from Venice, groups of aspiring young crusaders flocked to Padua, including one very particular group of students from the University of Bologna who came looking for the freedom being denied back home.

Over eight centuries, Padua has held firm to its roots, holding to its sense of freedom in research and teaching, the Patavina libertas, has accompanied the studies, research, and experiments of scholars and scientists such as Galileo Galilei, Andrea Vesalio, Gian Battista Morgagni and many more whose discoveries have forever transformed the face of knowledge known in the Western World.

It was from here, the University of Padua, where modern experimental science, modern anatomy, and modern medicine were born, and it is from here, today, that we study how to send a man to Mars.  Its motto Universa Universis Patavina Libertas is what has made it possible to make and to continue making history at the University of Padua.