Lendinara

The people of Lendinara told themselves they were older than Padua: they attributed the founding of their city to Antenor, the Trojan hero, who is said to have raised it before founding Padua — in which case the name would have been «Antenaria». On the real origin there is no agreement: some call it Celtic, some Germanic, some Venetic, and some derive it from the Latin hirundine, the swallow. The first document in which the town appears is of 944, a letter of pope Marinus II to the bishop of Adria, and there it is called Lendenaria.

In 1246 Ezzelino da Romano destroyed it, because the people of Lendinara were friends of the Sambonifacio; after the fire the town re-formed around the great Franciscan convent known as San Marco. Around 1275, for a short time, it governed itself as a republic. It had a podestà from 1225 and in 1321 the first statute in the Polesine; the title of city came in 1495. Then came the age of wood: here the Canozi school of woodcarvers was born, and in it Lorenzo Canozi excelled, a master of inlay. In 1695 the first printing house opened, and in the eighteenth century, between literature and worked wood, Lendinara earned itself a nickname: the Athens of the Polesine.