It has been burnt and damaged in one way and another repeatedly since it was first built, and in the course of the restorations the paintings on the walls have been excessively damaged, in many parts repainted, and in some obliterated altogether. The work was commenced at any rate, if not completed, just at the time that Dante and Giotto were together in this part of Italy. The walls are all divided into four panels in height by borders, with painted pilasters for vertical divisions, and the panels are generally arched and cusped. The paintings include the apostles, the signs of the zodiac, representations of the months, the planets, and the constellations. The whole scheme is far too complex to be intelligible without a key. This fortunately is accessible in the very careful and complete account of all the subjects of the paintings on the walls which was prepared in 1858 by Mr. W. Burges, and printed in the ‘Annales Archéologiques.’ With infinite pains he made out the meaning of the whole of the figures--no light task, as the walls being divided by painted borders and arcades into several stages in height and an almost interminable number in length, spaces are provided for some four hundred subjects.[24] At one end of the hall was the chapel of San Prodoscimo, formed I presume by screens. The judges sat round the hall, forming so many courts in one room. At the opposite end was a cage or prison, so that here, under one roof, with walls covered with illustrations, sat all the courts of Padua, without any of those ingenious divisions and subdivisions which are now necessary for the administration of the very smallest sort of justice, and it may be hoped with as much honesty as there certainly was simplicity. Now-a-days the hall is quite unused save as a receptacle for lumber, of which the most remarkable example is the remnant of a gigantic horse made by Donatello to travel on rollers in some old Paduan pageant. From the Palazzo della Ragione, we found our way to what must, so long as it lasts, be the great glory, as it is the chief charm, of Padua--Giotto’s Chapel, founded in 1303. [Illustration: ARENA CHAPEL--PADUA.] This stands in private grounds and on one side of a desolate green walk which leads up to a private house to which it now forms an appendage. From the first it was a little private chapel, and in no respect remarkable for size or costliness of material or design. The plan is a simple oblong nave with an apsidal chancel, and a sacristy on the north side, and nothing can be simpler than the exterior. The walls are of brick, divided into bays by narrow pilasters. The west door is round arched, as are also the windows. The interior is even more simple; the whole nave has not a moulding, the walls are continued on into the semicircular ceiling without any cornice, and all the ornament is added in colour.