University of Padua

The Cortile Antico, the old courtyard of Palazzo Bo in Padua, Italy, with its tower rising behind. Work on the palace began at the end of the 15th century, and it is still the university's central seat. Padua is a daughter of Bologna. The university recognizes 1222 as its founding year, when a mass of teachers and students left Bologna in search of greater academic freedom and settled here, with no papal or imperial decree behind them. Galileo taught in Padua for 18 years, and in 1678 the university granted the world's first degree to a woman, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia.