The contentious Border between Venice and Padua Territory as represented by the Cartography of 16 th -18 th Century Silvia Piovan, Franco Benucci Department of Historical, Geographical and Antiquity Sciences University of Padova (Italy) Abstract. This paper describes the most important phases of the conflict between Padua and Venice, initially for the state border and ultimately be- tween private landowners and the Venetian Republic, by mean of a dia- chronical analysis of historical maps from 16 th to 18 th centuries such as those of Ruffoni (1678), Fabris (1587), Formaleoni (1776), Valle (1784), Mi- lanovich (1786) and Valle (1801). They provide an important contribution in the geo-historical reconstruction of the contentious border between Ven- ice and the Padua territory, in particular near the village of Pettorazza, lo- cated along Adige River, just behind the southern Venice Lagoon. Keywords: Venice, Padua, border, Adige River 1. Introduction Adige River is the second Italian river by length and, since ancient times, allowed the connection between Central Europe on the one hand and the Adriatic Sea on the other (Piovan et al. 2010). It was also an hydrogeologi- cal risk for the villages nearby and the surrounding cultivated areas with its continuous crevasses and floodings. Its present-day course in the southern Venetian plain is related to an im- portant avulsion, occurred in the high part of the river during the High Middle Ages, that has shifted the river about 12 kilometres more to the south (Piovan et al. 2012). After this event, the area suffered a swampy con- dition until the new territorialisation by the Benedictine monks in the Low Middle Ages (Trolese 2010). Paduan territory, which included the lands reclaimed by Santa Giustina monks, was ruled by the powerful Da Carrara family from 1318 but after