Church of the Eremitani
Last updated on November 11, 2026The Eremitani is a large Augustinian church next door to the Scrovegni Chapel, and it is the site of one of the worst single losses of Italian Renaissance painting. Its Ovetari Chapel was frescoed by Andrea Mantegna in his twenties; an Allied bomb destroyed almost all of it on 11 March 1944. What is here now is partly survival, partly reconstruction, and worth seeing for both.
Challenge to visitors
It is confused with the museum next door constantly. The Musei Civici agli Eremitani occupy the former convent on the same site and are ticketed; the church itself is a parish church. People buy a museum ticket expecting the church, or skip the church thinking it is part of the ticket.
The frescoes are a reconstruction and that changes how you look. The chapel was destroyed by bombing in 1944 and what survives was pieced back together from fragments — knowing that before you stand in front of it is the difference between disappointment and astonishment.
And it is a working church, so visiting bends around services rather than the other way round.
Visiting tips and strategy
When to go
Pair it with a Scrovegni Chapel booking: the chapel admits you for a fixed short slot, and the Eremitani fills the time either side without any planning.
The interior is dim and largely daylit, so a bright day helps with the apse frescoes and the Ovetari fragments alike.
It is almost never crowded, even when the queue for the chapel next door is long.
Getting the good version
Do it on the same trip as the Scrovegni Chapel, which is a hundred metres away. The Chapel is booked to a fifteen-minute slot; the church is free and unhurried, and it is the obvious place to spend the time before or after that slot rather than standing in the garden.
Go straight to the chapel at the east end. The nave is large and plain and the frescoes are concentrated at the far end; the walk down is part of the effect but the detail is all in one place.
Look for the joins. The reassembled surfaces are not disguised, and once you start seeing where fragment meets plaster the room becomes a document of its own destruction as much as a fresco cycle.
The museum next door takes the rest of the morning and is on the same ticket as the Scrovegni Chapel — so the three together are a single sensible block rather than three errands.
What it costs
Free. The church is a parish church, not one of the civic museum sites, and no ticket is published for entering it.
The museum beside it is not free, and this is the distinction that costs people money or a visit. The Musei Civici agli Eremitani, in the former convent on the same site, are covered by the civic ticket — €11.00 for the museums alone, or €15.00 with the Scrovegni Chapel plus a €1.00 booking fee.
So the sensible ticket is the combined one, which puts the Chapel, the museums and this church within a hundred metres of each other for a single payment and one free walk.
Verified against Musei Civici di Padova (Comune di Padova), November 2026.
Getting there and getting in
Admission: Free
Where it is
On the Eremitani site beside piazza Eremitani 8, next to the Musei Civici and a hundred metres from the Scrovegni Chapel.
Admission
Free. It is a working parish church; visiting bends around services.
The museums next door
Musei Civici agli Eremitani are open daily 09:00–19:00, ticket office from 08:45, and cost €11.00 for the museums alone or €15.00 combined with the Scrovegni Chapel plus €1.00 booking. They close on 1 May, 25 and 26 December and 1 January.
How long
Half an hour, most of it at the east end.
Place accessibility
No accessibility information is published for the church, and that is recorded rather than filled in. It is a parish church and does not appear among the civic museum sites whose access arrangements the Comune documents.
The interior is a single level and a single volume, with no aisles and no crypt — once inside, the whole church is one open floor, which is structurally about as simple as a large medieval church gets.
The civic museums on the same site do publish their arrangements, and the Comune's ticket desks can be asked about the church while booking the Chapel, on +39 049 2010020.
Not published, and not guessed: whether the west door has a step, and how the chapel at the east end is approached.
Quick facts
- Type: Church
- Local name: Chiesa degli Eremitani (vedi la pagina italiana)
- Admission: Free
- Built: 1276-1306
- Architectural style: Gothic
- Denomination: Roman Catholic
- What survived 1944: An Allied bomb destroyed Mantegna's Ovetari Chapel in March 1944; two frescoes had been removed beforehand and fragments of the rest were reassembled over decades.
- Mantegna at seventeen: He began the chapel around 1448, barely out of his teens, and its perspective experiments shaped everything that followed.
Where it is
Get directions Open in Apple Maps
© OpenStreetMap contributors · © CARTO · 45.4113, 11.8794
Visit responsibly
An active parish church, free to enter and reliant on donations, with a restoration programme behind it that ran for decades.
The Ovetari Chapel is a war memorial as much as an art-historical site. It is presented plainly, without drama, and the appropriate response is the same.
Going in at all is the useful thing here: this is a significant building standing beside one of Italy's most-booked attractions and receiving a tiny fraction of its visitors.