Anguillara Veneta
Anguillara Veneta is a small town in the low-lying Padua countryside, set on the bank of the River Adige, in an area that until ju...
Updated 12 July 2026
The story
The story of Anguillara Veneta
The name and the eels of the Adige
The place name Anguillara already appears in documents from the tenth century, when the area was described as a marsh rich in eels along the course of the Adige, which still marks the town's southern boundary today. For centuries, eel fishing, carried out with traps set in the river's bends, was one of the community's main resources, alongside reed harvesting and animal breeding. The river remains the landscape's defining feature today, with embankments that can be walked or cycled and views over the floodplain, where wild vegetation grows right alongside the cultivated fields reaching down to the bank.
From the Carraresi to the Rocca di Borgoforte
In the Middle Ages the territory of Anguillara was a fief of the Carraresi family, lords of Padua, before passing under Venetian rule. In the late fourteenth century, near the hamlet of Borgoforte, a hard-fought battle was won by Venetian troops close to a fortification whose ruins can still be glimpsed, under certain conditions, in the waters of the Adige. After the fall of the Republic of Venice the town came under Austrian rule, until the Veneto was annexed to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866. These are traces of minor history compared with the great Venetian cities, but they show how even the most rural areas played a part in the region's shifting balance of power.
Land reclamation and today's countryside
Until the nineteenth century, much of the town's territory was covered by marshes and wetlands, hard to inhabit or farm. Reclamation work, begun as early as 1557 and only completed at the end of the nineteenth century with the introduction of steam-powered pumps, radically transformed the landscape, returning land to cultivation that is now among the most fertile in the low Padua plain. That legacy is still clearly visible in the layout of the territory: geometric fields, a dense network of canals and drainage ditches, and an agriculture that remains the heart of the local economy. Do not expect grand monuments here, but rather an orderly farming landscape that still speaks, in its own way, of generations of hard work.
The sweet potato of Anguillara
One of Anguillara Veneta's most genuine curiosities concerns the table: sweet potato growing was introduced to the area over a century ago by emigrants returning from Brazil, who brought back the tubers along with the knowledge of how to grow them. Since then the sweet potato has adapted well to the area's reclaimed soils, earning a local designation that recognizes its origin and quality. Today it is a small point of local pride, celebrated at village festivals, and it neatly sums up the story of a farming community able to innovate while staying true to its rural roots.
Churches and village landmarks
Anguillara's artistic heritage is typical of a rural Veneto village: the parish church dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle, the Oratorio della Madonna Addolorata and the Oratorio di Sant'Antonio di Padova, both eighteenth-century, along with the Villa della Veneranda Arca del Santo, historically linked to the area's religious welfare institutions. These are simple buildings, of local devotion rather than great artistic renown, but they honestly reflect the life of a farming community that over the centuries built its points of reference around the parish and small countryside chapels. A walk among these sites, perhaps along the Adige embankment, remains the best way to understand the character of the place.
Experiences not to miss
- Walk or cycle along the Adige embankment
- Look for traces of the Rocca di Borgoforte when water levels allow
- Visit the church of St Andrew the Apostle and the eighteenth-century oratories
- Taste Anguillara's sweet potato at local village festivals
- Explore the reclaimed countryside among canals and farmhouses
To see
What to see in Anguillara Veneta
Routes · Trovido Route
