„Stare to miasto i nieładne, ale wielkie...” Padewskie doświadczenia i obserwacje przybyszy z Rzeczypospolitej

Abstract

“It’s an old town and not very pretty, but huge...”. Paduan experiences and observations of travellers from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth The aim of the study is to examine students’ stays in as well as short pleasure visits to Padua by the inhabitants of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. An analysis of different categories of these visits has made it possible to reconstruct the educational and tourist expectations of the visitors and to describe the observations they were making in loco. This has allowed the author to define the visitors’ cultural inspirations, which were the primary effect of the stays at the University of Padua and in the city itself. Moreover, the author has been able to outline the gradual evolution of that impact on the successive generations of the Polish-Lithuanian elite. The travel diaries of people who visited Padua have been the main primary source of the study. Other sources include the memoirs of noblemen and other narratives not directly connected with foreign travels. The analysis has also encompassed parliamentary diaries and political leaflets, which illustrate the possible contexts in which this Italian educational centre may have been perceived. As a result, the author has been able to reconstruct and describe the evolution in the significance of Padua and the changing social associations this university centre created among the visitors as well as the inhabitants of the Polish- Lithuanian Commonwealth.