Room for free in the best hotel in Padua

Furnished bedrooms with bathrooms, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, and a tennis court. This is what is awaits you at the hotel “La Padovanelle”, which used to be one of the best hotels in the city and now stands abandoned.

A restaurant that once outranked every other kitchen in Padua now has no roof over half its dining room. Hotel Le Padovanelle sits on via Giacomo Chilesotti, on the eastern edge of the city in the district of Ponte di Brenta, a short walk from the racetrack that gave the property its name. Reachable by bicycle or local bus, the hotel is unfenced today, and entry is possible through several broken window frames along its perimeter. What remains is a 1960s hospitality complex that once counted forty rooms, an indoor and outdoor pool, a tennis court, a sauna and a gym among its amenities — a full resort experience built for a clientele that, for four decades, included some of the most recognisable names in Italian industry and politics.

Historical Context

The hotel-restaurant opened in 1966, next to the Ippodromo Le Padovanelle, the horse-racing track built in 1901 by the senator Vincenzo Stefano Breda, an industrialist and philanthropist who dominated much of Padua’s civic life in the second half of the nineteenth century. Breda died in 1903, and two years later the Fondazione Breda was created to administer the assets he left to the city — a foundation that would eventually control both the racetrack and the hotel for most of the twentieth century.

The Michelin Years

By the 1990s, the hotel’s restaurant had become the first in the Padua area to receive a star from the Michelin Guide, under the direction of chef Erminio Alajmo, who later became the patriarch of the Alajmo family’s acclaimed Le Calandre restaurant dynasty. The terrace facing the racetrack was, for two decades, a fixture of Veneto’s business elite: members of the Benetton, Zoppas, Marzotto and Zonin families were regulars, as was Leonardo Del Vecchio, the founder of Luxottica and, at various points, one of the wealthiest men in Italy. Politicians treated it as a second office: former Padua mayors and regional officials passed through regularly, and so did former Italian prime minister Mariano Rumor.

The decline, when it came, had no single dramatic cause. Guest numbers thinned through the 2000s until, in July 2008, the hotel closed for lack of customers — a closure that also marked the start of its slide into disrepair, since ownership passed into the hands of a foundation already struggling with its own finances. The Fondazione Breda entered a prolonged crisis and was eventually placed under regional commissarial administration, and with no operator willing to take on the cost of renovation, the building sat empty. An attempt to sell the property for roughly 14 million euros in the years after closure drew no buyers. By the mid-2010s, the site had become a well-known refuge for people without housing, and local police recorded repeated interventions: in August 2016, officers searching the premises after complaints from residents found makeshift bedding along with a machete, knives and a chisel, and detained three occupants. In 2017, deputy mayor Arturo Lorenzoni pushed for direct municipal intervention, comparing the property’s condition to that of Padua’s most notorious degraded housing block, and by July 2018, a coordinated cleanup and safety operation finally began, funded through the bankruptcy proceedings and supported by municipal waste services.

From Ruin to Auction

The property went to auction multiple times starting in October 2019, when it was listed at an opening value above 3 million euros. After several unsuccessful rounds, it finally sold in November 2021 for 800,000 euros to Gianni Gallo, an 86-year-old entrepreneur from Montebelluna and owner of Abaco SpA, a company that manages tax collection on behalf of Italian municipalities. Gallo stated publicly that he intended to relocate Abaco’s offices to the site and denied any speculative intent behind the purchase. The adjacent racetrack followed a separate path: it was auctioned the following year to a real estate company based in Udine for roughly 2 million euros, with the buyer committing to continue horse-racing activity on the grounds.

What We Found

Today, the hotel is home to homeless people, drug addicts, and some misfits, who are looking for a place to stay for a night. Actually, it is the best place for them! Beds in good condition are still there inside, some with mattresses, along with sofas and tables. There is no more light inside, but candles are used instead. What a romantic touch, in its own way.

Absolutely Comfortable Place to Stay

The police have identified this place as potentially dangerous and have carried out several checks inside. When we visited, there was nobody there — though traces of recent occupation remained, and it seemed likely that people would return once the sun went down. The swimming pools still hold water, along with some plastic objects once used as barriers. The changing room is still standing, the place where you’d once put off your swimming costume before a dip. The tennis court is still there too, and this time you could play on it for free.

You Wanna Swim?

Outside the perimeter, the hippodrome is still alive. People ride their horses, compete, and most likely never notice that, just meters away, an abandoned hotel sits behind the hedges — not the best one in the city anymore, and probably not any kind of hotel at all, not for much longer.

Current Status

As of the most recent available reporting, from late 2021, ownership of the hotel-restaurant building rests with Gianni Gallo’s company Abaco SpA, which acquired it at auction for 800,000 euros with stated plans to convert part of the complex into corporate offices. No subsequent public reporting on construction permits, renovation work, or a completed conversion of the site was found in searches covering 2022 through 2026, and the property’s exact physical condition at the time of writing, mid-2026, could not be independently confirmed beyond the 2021 sale record. The neighbouring Ippodromo Le Padovanelle, sold separately in 2022, has reportedly remained active as a working racetrack under its new ownership.

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