Arquà Petrarca

The old houses in light stone, the churches, the ancient sixteenth century residences and the ramps that connect the lower part to the upper part of the village immerse the visitor in a rural and luminous atmosphere. Scattered along the streets of the village there are old wash houses, drinking troughs and fountains, among which the one dedicated to Petrarca. The front arch in Nanto stone engraved with a couplet in Latin: "Sources numen inest, hospes: venerare liquorem, unde bibens cecinit digna Petrarcha deis" (A nume dwells in this source, or foreigner: venerates this water, drinking the which Petrarch could sing divine verses). On the parvis of the Parish Church of Santa Maria Assunta, documented since 1026, there is also the Tomba del Petrarca, in Verona's red marble, built six years after the poet's death. In the upper part of the village, in Piazza Petrarca stands Palazzo Contarini (XV century), in Venetian Gothic style and, next to it, a unique Osteria called "del Guerriero". Dominating the village stands the Oratory of the Holy Trinity with the striking Loggia dei Vicari, once embellished by the coats of arms, now present, only inside, the noble Paduan who, on behalf of the Serenissima, succeeded in the administration of the village .

The "Masiero e Centanin" Music Foundation is still to be found. The museum displays 25 ancient pianos, dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries, and the Casa del Petrarca, surrounded by the gardens of the poet himself, who spent his last four years here. of life, from 1370 to 1374 Near the village are to be pointed out finally the settlement for the lakes of the Laghetto della Costa, now a UNESCO site, where they were found the remains of an ancient settlement dating from the 23rd to the 15th century BC. symbolic and evocative Garden of Valsanzibio of the second half of the seventeenth century.

History
Attested as early as 985, the village has developed on the ridges of two hills, sloping on a flat strip in the direction of Vicenza in the shape of an arch, hence the Latin name Arquatum. The territory was inhabited by the ancient Venetians, who in 50 BC they allied with Rome against the Gauls, at the time of Emperor Augustus. Longobard political administrative center, it was probably placed on the defensive line between the Rocca di Monselice and the Vicenza area. Around the year 1000 Rudolph the Norman founded his castle here, around which developed the village that was inhabited at the end of the fourteenth century by Petrarch. Feudo of the Marquises of Este in the thirteenth century, until 1405 it was a possession of the Signoria Carrarese, who transformed the village into Vicaria. With the arrival of the Serenissima, the village experienced the period of maximum splendor, witnessed by the beautiful mansions, built by the Paduan and Venetian nobility, and by the urban planning still visible today. In 1868 he added the name of Petrarch to the name Arquà.

The village and the poet
In 1365 Francesco Petrarca became a canon in nearby Monselice. In 1369 Francesco il Vecchio gave him a plot of land in the village, where the poet certainly went to follow the restoration of what became his last home. So the poet described Arquà, his good retreat: "vast forests of chestnut, beech, ash, oak, oak covered the slopes of Arquà, but above all the wine, the olive tree and the almond tree that contributed to create the suggestive and typical landscape arquatense".