Museo delle Antiche Vie

About

San Salvaro is a small hamlet in the town of Urbana, situated in the heart of the Paduan countryside and immersed in the green, rural Veneto landscape. This little village is an oasis of peace and tranquility. Situated between Padua and Verona, it boasts a strategical position, being only a few kilometers from the medieval towns of Montagnana, Este, Monselice and the Euganean Hills. San Salvaro grew around the monastery of the same name, whose origins date back to the late 11th century: archived documents mention a "schola sacerdotum" in this location as far back as the year 1084. The monastery was built in correspondence to the passage of the Stone Bridge over the Fratta River, which still today runs alongside the monastery. Since ancient times, the road next to the monastery had been the passageway that ran from the town of Vighizzolo, passing through the ancient villages of the Bassa Paduana, through Lombardia and on to the Basso Veronese, until finally arriving in Santiago de Compostela The small monastery also had a church dedicated to the Holy Savior (Santissimo Salvatore), hence its name "San Salvaro". It became an Augustinian Monastery in 1181, the year when its destiny was linked to that of the Santa Maria delle Carceri Abbey, near to the town of Este. Yet it was mainly starting from the 15th century that the monastery developed its primary functions: enlarging and changing its look (from an architectonical point of view as well), expanding all its spaces and renovating the church. Starting out as a small but vital, religious and political lookout in the Paduan countryside, the monastery developed into an organized community of Camaldolesi monks, present from 1407 onward. These monks not only looked after the souls of the needy and cared for travelling pilgrims, but they truly took to heart the agrarian reorganization and rural vocation of these lands. This territory was comprised mainly of swamplands and therefore reigned over by water, continuously threatened by floods and overflowing rivers. They were precious territories, given that wheat, wine, hemp and cereals could all be grown here. The farming and rural vocation of these lands remained crucial even after the year 1690, when the monastery was closed down and then later purchased during an auction by the Carminati Counts, who transformed the monastery and the village of San Salvaro into one vast, immense agricultural farm (approximately equal to 3000 Paduan fields). Today, this centennial history has been reevaluated and revisited from a touristic point of view. Thanks to a cultural requalification project, the monastery now hosts the Museum of Antique Ways, a Youth Hostel and a modern Parish Center. Between the end of the 1990's and beginning of the new millennium, the municipality of Urbana and the San Salvaro Parish believed in a common project: investing in the environmental and cultural reclamation of the area in order to offer tourists a relaxed location in which to absorb the history and soul of these rural farming lands.

At a glance

• Typical visit: about 1 hour 30 minutes