SNCF

Jacques Chirac, the French president, pledged in his 2006 New Year Address that by 2026 no SNCF or RATP train would be powered by fossil fuels.^[1] This pledge confirms France's commitment to nuclear power for its energy needs, and already nuclear power stations generate most of the electricity used to power SNCF's trains. It is also the home of the Petrarca Padova rugby union team. The IATA designator used by airlines in connection with these journeys is 2C. It is the home of Calcio Padova, a soccer team that plays in Italy's Serie C1 division. SNCF codeshares with American Airlines, United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Continental Airlines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways, and Emirates and in exchange, allows passengers on those flights to book rail service between Charles de Gaulle International Airport in Roissy (near Paris) and Angers, Avignon, Bordeaux, Le Mans, Lille, Lyons, Marseille, Montpellier, Nantes, Nimes, Poiters, Rennes, Tours, and Valence with their airline. Other races include very small numbers of Filipino, Croatians, Serbs, and Moroccans. TGV lines and the TGV technology have since spread to several other European countries plus South Korea. The racial makeup of the city is 94.5% Italian, 1.3% Romanian, 0.5% Albanian, and 0.5% Moldovan.

It came to fruition in 1981, when the first TGV service from Paris to Lyon was inaugurated. Many of the labourers are those of eastern European origin, and North African origin. In the 1970s, SNCF began the TGV high speed train programme with the intention of creating the world's fastest railway network. The commerce and jobs attract many immigrants into the city. The French state took 51% control of SNCF and has since put large amounts of public subsidies into the system. The presence of the university attracted many distinguished artists, as Giotto, Fra Filippo Lippi and Donatello; and for native art there was the school of Francesco Squarcione (1394-1474), whence issued the great Mantegna (1431-1506). These were the:. The place of Padua in the history of art is nearly as important as its place in the history of learning.

The SNCF was formed in 1938 following the nationalisation of France's five main railways. The university hosts the oldest anatomy theatre 1594 and the oldest botanical garden 1545 in the world. Since 1997 the tracks and other elements of French rail infrastructure have belonged to a separate government establishment, the Réseau Ferré de France; this change was intended to open the market to independent train operating companies, although none has yet appeared. The list of professors and alumni is long and illustrious, containing, among others, the names of Bembo, Sperone Speroni, the anatomist Vesalius, Fallopius, Fabrizio d'Acquapendente, Galileo Galilei, Pietro Pomponazzi, Reginald, later Cardinal Pole, Scaliger, Tasso and Sobieski. In the past, SNCF owned not only the trains, but also the tracks, but this has changed due to new European Union regulations. Under the rule of Venice the university was governed by a board of three patricians, called the Riformatori dello Studio di Padova. SNCF operates almost all of France's railway system, including the TGV (Train à Grande Vitesse, literally "high-speed train") and some segments of the RER. Padua has long been famous for its university, founded in 1222.

. In 1866 the battle of Koniggratz gave Italy the opportunity to shake off the last of the Austrian yoke, when Padua and the rest of the Veneto became part of the united Kingdom of Italy. Its headquarters are situated in Paris, in the Rue du Commandant Mouchotte. In Padua, the year of revolutions of 1848 was a student revolt on February 8 that transformed the University and the Caffè Pedrocchi into real battlefields, in which students and ordinary Padovani fought side by side. The current chairman of SNCF is Louis Gallois. The Austrians were unpopular with progressive circles in northern Italy. About 14,000 trains are operated daily. Padoue (the French name) was made a duché grand-fief ...

The rail network currently consists of about 32,000 km of track, of which 1,500 km is high-speed track and 14,500 km is electrified. After the fall of the Venetian republic the history of Padua follows the history of Venice during the periods of French and Austrian supremacy. It employs about 180,000 people. Venice fortified Padua with new walls, built between 1513 and 1544, with a series of monumental gates. Its functions include operation of rail services for passengers and freight in France, and maintenance of rail infrastructure owned by RFF (Réseau Ferré de France). The treasury was managed by two chamberlains; and every five years the Paduans sent one of their nobles to reside as nuncio in Venice, and to watch the interests of his native town. SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) is a major French public enterprise. Under these governors the great and small councils continued to discharge municipal business and to administer the Paduan law, contained in the statutes of 1276 and 1362.

Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans et du Midi (PO-Midi, formed in 1934 following the merging of the Chemin de Fer de Paris à Orléans and the Chemin de Fer du Midi). The city was governed by two Venetian nobles, a podestà for civil and a captain for military affairs; each of these was elected for sixteen months. Chemin de Fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée (PLM). Padua passed under Venetian rule in 1405, and so remained, with a brief interval during the wars of the League of Cambray, till the fall of the republic in 1797. Chemin de Fer du Nord. It is the oldest botanical garden in the world and still contains an important collection of rare plants. Chemin de Fer de l'État (formed in 1909 following the merging of the Chemin de Fer de l'État and the Chemins de Fer de l'Ouest). The botanical garden was founded in 1545 as the garden of curative herbs attached to the University's faculty of medicine.

Chemin de Fer de l'Est. In the "Room of the Forty" remains the chair of Galileo, who taught in Padua from 1592 to 1610; the Aula Magna, rich with coats of arms and decorations; The famous Anatomy Theatre, where Vesalius taught through dissections, is the oldest in the world (1594). The center of the university is founded around a rebuilt mediaeval inn of the "Bo" (the Ox), the mid-16th century Old Courtyard by Andrea Moroni. Padua prospered economically, and the university (the third in Italy) was founded in 1222, making it one of the oldest universities in continuous operation. It was a long period of restlessness, for the Carraresi were constantly at war; they were finally extinguished between the growing power of the Visconti and of Venice.

From that date till 1405, with the exception of two years (1388-1390) when Giangaleazzo Visconti held the town, nine members of the enlightened Carraresi family succeeded one another as lords of the city. As a reward for freeing the city from the Scalas, Jacopo da Carrara was elected lord of Padua in 1318 (query 1338?). But this advance brought them into dangerous proximity to Can Grande della Scala, lord of Verona, to whom they had to yield in 1311. When Ezzelino was unseated in June 1256 without civilian bloodshed, thanks to Pope Alexander IV, Padua enjoyed a period of rest and prosperity: the university flourished; the basilica of the saint was begun; the Paduans became masters of Vicenza.

The temporary success of the Lombard League helped to strengthen the towns; but their ineradicable civic jealousy soon reduced them to weakness again, so that in 1236 Frederick II found little difficulty in establishing his tyrannical vicar Ezzelino da Romano in Padua and the neighbouring cities, where he practised frightful cruelties on the inhabitants. The citizens, in order to protect their liberties, were obliged to elect a podestà, and after a devastating fire in 1174 that required the virtual rebuilding of the city, their choice fell first on one of the Este family. At the beginning of the 11th century the citizens established a constitution, composed of a general council or legislative assembly and a credenza or executive body, and during the next century they were engaged in wars with Venice and Vicenza for the right of water-way on the Bacchiglione and the Brenta— so that, on the one hand, the city grew in power and self-reliance, while, on the other, the great families of Camposampiero, Este and Da Romano began to emerge and to divide the Paduan district among them. Under the surface two important movements were taking place.

The general tendency of its policy throughout the war of investitures was Imperial and not Roman; and its bishops were, for the most part, Germans. During the period of episcopal supremacy over the cities of northern Italy, Padua does not appear to have been either very important or very active. At the Diet of Aix-la-Chapelle (828), the duchy and march of Friuli, in which Padua lay, was divided into four counties, one of which took its title from that city. The city did not easily recover from this blow, and Padua was still weak when the Franks succeeded the Lombards as masters of north Italy.

The simple people fled to the hills and returned to eke out a living among the ruins; the ruling class abandoned the city for Laguna, according to a chronicle. The Padua of Antiquity was annihilated: the remains of an amphitheater (the Arena) and some bridge foundations are all that remain of Roman Padua today. Under the Lombards the city of Padua rose in revolt (601) against Agilulf, the Lombard king, and after suffering a long and bloody siege was stormed and burned by him. The history of Padua after Late Antiquity follows the course of events common to most cities of north-eastern Italy.

The city was seized again by the Goths under Totila, but was restored to the Eastern Empire by Narses in 568. It then passed under the Gothic kings Odoacer and Theodoric the Great, but during the Gothic War it made submission to the Greeks in 540. Padua, in common with north-eastern Italy, suffered severely from the invasion of the Huns under Attila (452). Abano nearby is the birthplace of the historian Livy, and Padua was the native place of Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus and Thrasea Paetus.

Its men fought for the Romans at Cannae, and the city (a Roman municipium since 45 BC (query 43?)) became so powerful that it was reported able to raise two hundred thousand fighting men. The historical Padua inhabited by (Adriatic) Veneti thrived thanks to its excellent breed of horses and the wool of its sheep. Padua claims to be the oldest city in north Italy; the early medieval commune justified itself by a fabled founder in the Trojan Antenor, whose relics the commune recognized in a large stone sarcophagus exhumed in the year 1274. The trade of the district has grown to such an extent that Padua has become the central market for the whole of Veneto.

Corn and saw mills, distilleries, chemical factories, breweries, candle-works, ink-works, foundries, agricultural machine and automobile works, have been established and are flourishing. The industry of Padua has greatly developed in modern times. . Padua is the setting for most of the action in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.

The city is picturesque, with a dense network of arcaded streets opening into large communal piazze, and many bridges crossing the various branches of the Bacchiglione, which once surrounded the ancient walls like a moat. Its agricultural setting is the Pianura Padovana, the "Paduan plain," edged by the Euganaean Hills praised by Lucan and Martial, Petrarch and Ugo Foscolo. The city is included, with Venice (Italian Venezia), in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, population 1,600,000. The capital of Padova province, it stands on the Bacchiglione River, 40km west of Venice and 29km southeast of Vicenza, with a population of 211,985 (2004).

Patavium) is the economic and communications hub of the Veneto region in northern Italy. Padova IPA ['padova], Lat. The city of Padua (It. This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, a publication in the public domain..

Close by the Eremitani, in the site of an old Roman arena, is the small Scrovegni Chapel whose inner walls are entirely covered with paintings by Giotto. The old monastry of the church now houses the municipal art gallery. The Church of the Eremitani is an Augustinian church of the 13th century, distinguished as containing the tombs of Jacopo (1324) and Ubertino (1345) da Carrara, lords of Padua, and for the chapel of SS James and Christopher, formerly illustrated by Mantegna's frescoes, largely destroyed by the Allies in World War II, because it was housing a German headquarter. One of the best known symbols of Padua is the "Prato della Valle", a 90.000 sq meters elliptical square believed to be the biggest in Europe, after Red Square in Moscow.

On the piazza in front of the church is Donatello's magnificent equestrian statue of "Gattamelata" (Erasmo da Narni), the Venetian general (1438-1441), which was cast in 1453, the first full-size equestrian bronze cast since antiquity; it was inspired by the Marcus Aurelius equestrian sculpture at the Capitoline Hill in Rome. The bones of the saint rest in a chapel richly ornamented with carved marbles, the work of various artists, among them of Sansovino and Falconetto; the basilica was begun about the year 1230 and completed in the following century; tradition says that the building was designed by Nicola Pisano; it is covered by seven cupolas, two of them pyramidal. The most famous of the Paduan churches is the basilica dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua, locally simply called "Il Santo". Falconetto was the architect of Alvise Cornaro's garden loggia, (Loggia Cornaro), the first fully Renaissance building in Padua [1].

In the Piazza dei Signori is the beautiful loggia called the Gran Guardia, (1493 - 1526), and close by is the Palazzo del Capitanio, the residence of the Venetian governors, with its great door, the work of Giovanni Maria Falconetto, the Veronese architect-sculptor who introduced Renaissance architecture to Padua and who completed the door in 1532. The new space was refrescoed by Nicolo' Miretto and Stefano da Ferrara, working from 1425 to 1440. The Palazzo was begun in 1172 and finished in 1219; in 1306 Fra Giovanni, an Augustinian friar, covered the whole with one roof; originally there were three roofs, spanning the three chambers into which the hall was at first divided; the internal partition walls remained till the fire of 1420, when the Venetian architects who undertook the restoration removed them, throwing all three spaces into one and forming the present great hall, the Salone. The Palazzo della Ragione, with its great hall on the upper floor, is reputed to have the largest roof unsupported by columns in Europe; the hall is nearly rectangular, its length 815 m, its breadth 27 m, and its height 24 m; the walls are covered with allegorical frescoes; the building stands upon arches, and the upper storey is surrounded by an open loggia, not unlike that which surrounds the basilica of Vicenza.