I was sheltering from the rain at the Chiesa degli Eremetani or Church of the Hermits in Padova. It is a rather large church beside the more famous one which I will visit afterwards. Still, what appeared to be a rather ordinary church turned out to be another centuries old church dating back to the fourteenth century. The church is dedicated to Saint Philip and James so I don’t know where the name Hermits came from. Like a lot of churches in this era, the Church of the Hermits was covered in frescoes. At least it was. There was a lot of damage to the church during the war and it took with it the frescoes which adorn the walls of the church.

However, not all of the frescoes were lost to the war. There where still some that can still be seen here. The church was dark and it made it a difficult to appreciate the frescoes on display here. Some of the frescoes depict the lives to Saints Philip and Saint Augustine but the others are lost forever. It is a shame that such a masterpiece of a church was lost to the ravages of war. Even the current church is just a reconstruction made from the fragments of the old one. It was a like a giant jigsaw puzzle and it was only completed this millennium. I am amazed that we can still see anything considering what happened to it.

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