University of Padua founded

1222

Scholars from Bologna, dissatisfied with conditions at their old studium, migrated en masse to Padua and founded a new university under the protection of the local bishop. Padua would become a leading center of medicine and, by the Renaissance, of anatomy and Galileo's physics. Its anatomical theater, built in 1594, remains the oldest surviving structure of its kind, a steep oval of wooden tiers.