Moments from Arena Chapel

Enrico Scrovegni built this small brick chapel in Padua around 1303, on the site of an old Roman arena, largely to atone for the sins of his father Reginaldo, a moneylender so notorious for usury that Dante placed him in the seventh circle of the Inferno. To decorate it, Scrovegni hired Giotto, who covered every surface, walls and ceiling both, with a fresco cycle depicting the lives of Mary and Christ that art historians generally treat as the real starting point of Western painting's turn away from flat Byzantine gold grounds and toward figures who occupy real space and feel real things. The grief on the faces in the Lamentation scene, painted in 1305, was something Western art simply hadn't shown before.

Visits are strictly controlled to protect the frescoes: you wait in a climate-stabilizing anteroom for about fifteen minutes before entering, and once inside you get roughly fifteen more minutes with the cycle itself, so book ahead and plan your time before you walk in rather than after. Follow the story in order, top to bottom, the narrative runs chronologically around the walls, and finish by turning around to face the entrance wall, where Giotto painted a Last Judgment that most first-time visitors miss entirely because they've already turned to leave.