The Scrovegni Chapel, a masterpiece by Giotto and a great accomplishment of Italian and European painting in the Fourteenth century, is considered the most complete cycle of frescoes painted by the great master from Tuscany in his maturity.
Colour and light, poetry and pathos.
Man and God.
The sense of nature and of history, the sense of mankind and of faith: they all merge to tell some stories about the Virgin Mary and Christ in a unique and unrepeatable way.
Giotto completed the frescoes in the Chapel by the early 1306.
At the time “… the chapel has a very simple architectural style: a rectangular hall with barrel vault, an elegant Gothic three-mullioned window on the façade, tall narrow windows on the south side, a polygonal apse upon which the bell room was added later.”
The cycle of paintings in the Chapel develops around three main themes: episodes from the lives of Joachim and Anna (panels 1-6); episodes from the life of the Virgin Mary (panels 7-13), and episodes from the life and death of Jesus Christ.
Below these frescoes is a series of panels containing the allegories of Vices and Virtues.

The Chapel was named after St. Mary of Charity; it was frescoed between 1303 and 1305 by Giotto by appointment of Enrico degli Scrovegni. Now it stands as one of the highest masterpieces in Western arts.  The narration fully covers the walls with stories about the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, while the counter-façade contains the grandiose Last Judgement, which closes the tale about the salvation of mankind.
Originally the building was connected to the Scrovegni family palace, which was built after the year 1300 following the elliptical positioning of the ruins of the Roman arena.
In 1880 the Chapel was bought by the Municipality of Padua; since then frescoes have been constantly monitored and several conservation operations were performed in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. Since the 1970’s to present day close partnership between the city government, the Monuments and Fine Arts Office and the Central Institute for Restoration has produced accurate studies and monitoring on the state of the building, on the quality of air, on polluting agents, and on the conservation state of the paintings. A new entrance hall was built and equipped with an air-treatment system to better manage the heavy flow of visitors while safeguarding the frescoes.
The latest monitoring evidenced that the situation had stabilized, therefore restoration works could be carried out. The works were executed by the Central Institute for Restoration in compliance with the memorandum of understanding entered between the City Government and the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities.

The path to follow to get into the Chapel offers seven multi-media stations that help visitors get an insight of the Chapel and of the historical-artistic context where Giotto worked.
By using different communication media (images, sounds, talking films, real and virtual reconstructions) the visitor becomes the protagonist.
 The use of the IT tools available on site, the possibility to enter physically-reproduced spaces, and the choice to alternate moments of “passive” observation with more active interventions, all allow the user to enter the art of Giotto and understand the context where it was born and developed. Users can search for more detailed information on the topics they find more interesting, in order to enjoy the visit to Giotto's masterpiece with the right preparation, culturally and emotionally.
The multimedia path is not pre-arranged and it may last from 30 minutes min. to the time that any visitor will think adequate.