ABSTRACT
Fifty years after the unification of Italy, the anniversary of that historic event was widely celebrated, not least by the University of Padua. This was in the academic year 1911–1912, during the months of the Italo-Turkish conflict. At that time, this historic seat of learning, one of the first to be founded in Europe (1222) and, for centuries, the only university of the Venetian territories, hosted 1,613 students out of an urban population of 96,118 inhabitants. By 1914–1915, the number of students enrolled at the university had risen to 1,878. These included 1,527 males and 351 females—1,775 Italians from the Kingdom of Italy, 80 Italians from territories still under Austrian rule (the upland province of Trento and the coastal province of Trieste, the main port of the Habsburg Empire), and 23 foreign students.
