Discover Arquà Petrarca

A concise introduction to Arquà Petrarca, its geography, history and culture.

Introduction

Arquà is a village on a slope in the Euganean Hills, twenty minutes from Abano Terme, and it is where Petrarch chose to end his life.

He moved here in 1370 and died in 1374, reportedly at his desk. His house survives, and so does the village around it — a medieval hill settlement of stone houses on two levels that has never been substantially rebuilt.

His tomb stands in the square below the church, in red Verona marble and raised on columns so that it is impossible to walk past without noticing. The village added his name to its own in 1868.

Geography

Arquà sits on the flank of one of the Euganean Hills, a cluster of extinct volcanic cones that rise abruptly out of the flat Veneto plain southwest of Padua.

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History

A terraced village on a volcanic cone, worked since Roman times. Petrarch was given land here by the lord of Padua, moved in during 1370 and died in 1374; his tomb was placed in the open square six years later. Byron, Shelley and Mozart followed, and in 1868 the comune took the poet's name.

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