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The Summer School is part of the collaboration agreement recently signed between ShanghaiTech University and the University of Padova. It offers a Course in which the participant students will be exposed to a panorama of Italian Culture, from Medieval times to the present days. It will be all-encompassing, i.e., both Art and Science will be covered. Considering that the Summer Camp is part of the Protocol of Agreement of the two Universities, the Course will put special focus on the historical role and the modern developments of Art and Science in the part of Italy that in the old days was the Republic of Venice: which had in Venice, a UNESCO World Heritage Sire, a glorious center of artistic culture, and in the University of Padova a citadel of exceptionally important scientific culture. The Course will be organized in two separate locations: Venice will be the seat of the first portion of the Course which, quite aptly, with deal with Art, spanning from music to visual art, to architecture, to literature. The venue will be the beautiful, and historically relevant, Fondazione Cini on San Giorgio’s Island, vis-a-vis with Saint Mark’s square. The Venice portion of the Course will see an intensive program of Lectures, but also a number of related activities in Venice proper and in some of the artistically important 118 islands of the Venice lagoon. The seat of the second portion of the Course will be the quaint little city of Asiago, a renowned mountain vacation resort where the University of Padova has its Astronomical Observatory. In Asiago the Course will deal with science: the Lectures will offer an across-the-board panorama of scientific topics, placing emphasis on those that have particular significance at the University of Padova, and paying special attention to the historical role of the University of Padova in the development of modern science: which has been exceptionally important, with names like those of Galileo, Harvey, Morgagni that speak for themselves. On the way from Venice to Asiago a stopover is planned in Vicenza, which has also been proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and where some of the most important architectural landmarks of Palladio are located: during the Vicenza stopover a lecture on Palladio’s architecture is also planned. After the visit to Vicenza another stopover is planned in the quaint littlke town of Bassano, which is famous for its cover bridge and for a very old, historical distillery of “Grappa”. Also the program in Asiago will have an intensive series of Lectures, which will emphasize topics that are strongly represented at the University of Padova. However they will also cover topics that are at the interline of the two cultures. The Asiago portion of the Course will also have a number of collateral activities, including a night at the telescope of the Observatory, hikings in the surrounding mountains where the trenches of world war-one can still be seen, and some gastronomy-related activities: Asiago is indeeed a capital of the Italian cheese and honey-marmalade industry. It is also planned to devote a day during the Asiago period to a full day tour to Padova, to visit the University and some of the important cultural places in the city, including the famous Botanical Garden, which is the oldest in the world (it retains the original layout from 1545), and which has been proclaimed a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tours from Asiago will be organized to the Museum of Antonio Canova in the nearby city of Possagno (Canova’s birthplace), and to to the important archaeological area of Aquileia (also a UNESCO World Heritage Site), about 150 km East of Asiago. Aquileia was one of the wealthiest cities of the early Roman Empire, and has beautiful mosaic floors. Its Patriarchal basilica was primarily important in the spreading of Christianity in the early Middle Ages.
We will open the Course to some Italian students /postdocs as auditors, to facilitate the contacts between Chinese and Italian students. Considering ShanghaiTech’s requirements for students’ credits, the Course at the Summer School (essentially the 40-plus Lecture hours) will add up to 2 credit points. For the final tests, the students will be asked to write two short essays (up to 2000 words), one on any of the non scientific topics of the Course, and one on any of the science-related topics. The essays will be handed-in about one week after the end of the Course, and will be rapidly evaluated by the Members of the Organizing Committee and by selected Lecturers. The students will be presented a certificate of the participation in the Summer School by the Rector of the University in a ceremony in one of the historical halls of the University on the occasion of the visit of the Course to Padova on September 5.