The San Francesco Oratory dates back to the construction of a villa for the Lazara family during the seventeenth century. In 1747 the villa was purchased by the Fante family and subsequently by the Santonini family; later it would be incorporated within the buildings of the Gentilini flour mills. Inside, above the stone altar in red and white ammonitico from the Verona area, is an altarpiece of The Madonna and Child with St. Francis of Assisi which was painted by an unknown seventeenth-century Veneto artist; the crest in the lower part of the picture is that of the Santonini family.
An inscription on the right wall of the oratory actually commemorates an ancient place of worship in Padua: the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria della Misericordia in Prato della Valle. Initially founded by St. Prosdocimus but destroyed by the Huns in 914 A. D., that monastery was rebuilt in 1653 and further added to in 1684. Ultimately it would be severely damaged by flooding and then suppressed in the nineteenth century.
Menu
