Scrovegni Chapel
chapel in Padua, Italy
The Scrovegni Chapel (Italian: Cappella degli Scrovegni [kapˈpɛlla deʎʎi skroˈveɲɲi]), also known as the Arena Chapel, is a small church, adjacent to the Augustinian monastery, the Monastero degli Eremitani in Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. The chapel and monastery are now part of the complex of the Musei Civici di Padova.
The chapel contains a fresco cycle by Giotto, completed around 1305 and an important masterpiece of Western art. In 2021, the chapel was declared part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of 14th-century fresco cycles composed of 8 historical buildings in Padua city centre. The Scrovegni Chapel contains the most important frescoes that marked the beginning of a revolution in mural painting and influenced fresco technique, style, and content for a whole century.
Description
Giotto and his team covered all the internal surfaces of the chapel with frescoes, including the walls and the ceiling. The nave is 20.88 metres (68.5 ft) long, 8.41 metres (27.6 ft) wide, and 12.65 metres (41.5 ft) high. The apse area is composed of a square area (4.49 meters deep and 4.31 meters wide) and a pentagonal area (2.57 meters deep). The largest element is extensive cycles showing the Life of Christ and the Life of the Virgin. The wall at the rear of the church, through which the chapel is entered, has a large Last Judgement.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Scrovegni Chapel” is chapel in Padua, Italy. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Scrovegni, Chapel and chapel, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “chapel in Padua, Italy” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q963954. VIAF identifies the subject as 124429791. The Library of Congress control number is n87840423. Authority coordinates are 45.412, 11.880. 5 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1305 and 2021.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Scrovegni Chapel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.