Didactics, research and experimentation in the agricultural, veterinary and forestry fields at the University of Padova: today it is the Agripolis campus, built in the Nineties, that welcomes and enriches these requests. From the sixteenth century and for about two centuries, however, the cultivation and study of plants in Padua were the sole responsibility of the Botanical Gardens; only in 1766 was an Agricultural Garden created for teaching and experimentation within the Padua walls, first at Santa Croce, then at Portello.
In the last post-war period, the Minister for Education, Gonnella, approved beginning the courses at the Faculty of Agriculture in November 1946. The headquarters were then established in the area of the Agricultural Garden at Portello, in a complex of new buildings built in less than a year to a project by Massimo Velatta and inaugurated in 1951.
The initial spaces soon turned out to be insufficient, especially as the degree course in Forestry Sciences was started in 1968. To cope with the increased number of students and the increased experimental needs, the structures were expanded in 1973.
The changed needs in experimentation, the use of machines and chemical products required spaces that are more suitable: the experimental company of Legnaro was born and, from 1996, the Faculties of Agriculture, Forestry Sciences and the newborn Veterinary Medicine were transferred, giving life to the new Agripolis Centre.
Agripolis: video-guide to the Campus
Today the Agripolis Campus hosts classrooms and research spaces for the departments of agronomy, animals, food, natural resources and environment, animal care, production and health, comparative biomedicine and food science, territory and agro-food systems; there are also a library, the veterinary hospital, the experimental farm ‘Lucio Toniolo’, the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale delle Venezie (IZSVe – Italian public health authority deputed to conduct prevention, control, research and services in the fields of animal health and food safety), Veneto Agricoltura (Regional Agency for Agriculture), residences, administrative and information technology sector, canteen and sports facilities.