I wonder when the last good old fashioned sacking happened? A real sacking, not just a bombing followed by an invasion, but the real thing – pillaging, enslavement, and of course the sacking of the city –  the whole deal. Today we went to Padua – it’s probably right up there in the ‘Oh-oh it looks like we’re about to be sacked again!’ list.

According to the Wikipedia historians Padua was established by a Trojan prince, taken over by the Romans and was going along nicely for about a thousand years until 452ad. That year was sacking number one thanks to Atilla and his Huns – and this event really set the wrecking ball rolling.  Atilla’s destructive work was followed by a Byzantine sacking in 540, one by Lombardy in 613, the Maygars in 899, a massive fire that destroyed the place in 1174, and back to a sacking again by the Prussians in 1866.  In between all these events the city was invaded regularly and just changed hands without being totally destroyed.

The Padovans have to be some of the most resilient humans on earth,  or some of the stupidest. Every single time they simply started again from scratch, but only once in all that time did they think it might be a good idea to build some walls. Or moats. Or anything. The one attempt to build city walls was in 600, and it was actually quite successful because these ramparts kept the attacking Lombards out for 12 years.  After that particular invasion they didn’t bother too much with anything like a defensive system.   They must have just said – ‘What’s the point Fabio?   We’ re just going to get sacked again anyway.’  At least total destruction by fire in 1174 was a bit of a change.

Somewhere in all that they established one of the oldest universities in the world, a university that is the second oldest in Italy after Bologna . They gradually became industrialised, going from the poorest city in Northern Italy to one of the wealthiest, and managed to keep some of their buildings intact long enough for us to want to visit the place today.

We really enjoyed Padua.  It was great to wander around the city
and get a feel for the place.   It has the buzz of a wealthy, old university town.  It feels optimistic and vibrant. There are great produce markets and kilometres and kilometres of really interesting streets. Besides, they haven’t been properly sacked for about 150 years.  They’ve gotta be happy with that.

Enough history,  better let you go Farquar.