IT’S TOUGH TO PULL AWAY FROM VENICE, but a half-hour train ride will bring you to this splendid fourteenth-century chapel, dedicated to Mary and frescoed by Giotto, who inspired all the Renaissance greats. It was built over ruins of a Roman arena, which is why its real name is the Church of the Madonna dell’Arena. But it’s better known as the Scrovegni Chapel, because it was originally a part of their family villa.

The inspiration to call in Giotto to fresco this place came from Enrico Scrovegni, who was desperate to not burn in hell. His father, Reginaldo, was a scumbag money lender—the embodiment of the worst credit card company you can imagine, who charged ridiculously high interest rates and awful late fees. Reginaldo was so despised that the church denied him a burial. Dante put him in the Seventh Circle of Hell, where he was doomed to sit on hot sand with his head bent while Florentines shouted in his ears for eternity.

Enrico, a wealthy merchant and banker, wasn’t so different from his father, so to atone for Reginaldo’s sins, save his soul and his family’s, he went overboard and called in the best painter of the day to work on the church adjoining his home.

You’ll walk in to be wowed by the intense blue of Giotto’s curved star-studded ceiling that tops thirty-eight frescos, all backed by that heavenly blue, which narrate the life of Mary and then Christ.

Giotto broke the mold of the stiff Middle Ages, bringing emotion to these figures, which in 1306 was as radical as adding special effects to a movie. There’s an innocent beauty to every panel. Characters plead, embrace, conspire and lament as angels sweep in like comets.

Here, sort of like how Ron Howard took the Da Vinci Code and made it into a movie, Giotto took The Golden Legend, a bestselling book of his day, and made a medieval graphic novel with Mary in the lead. The Golden Legend, written by a friar, told imaginative stories of Christianity’s major players. Folks back then loved relating to holy people in a contemporary way for the first time.

Since you probably haven’t read the book, the images need some explanation. Giotto’s scenes play out in three tiers, beginning at the top left corner to “establish the conflict,” as Hollywood script analysts would say. Joachim, Mary’s father, gets thrown out of the temple because after twenty years of marriage, he and his wife Ann are still childless. What follows is Joachim retreating to his fields in despair, sacrificing a goat to lift the barren curse. Meanwhile home-alone Ann receives the news from an angel that she’s finally pregnant. The couple rejoices, Mary is born and taken at three years old to the temple.

In the eighth fresco you’ll see men lined up with sticks in their hands, for the Presentation of the Rods. The story goes that when Mary was fourteen and marriage-ready, the high priest called in every bachelor in town to lay their rod on the altar, and whoever had a rod that flowered could marry Mary. The guy standing to the side with a beard is Joseph, who figured he was too old to marry a fourteen-year-old, so he doesn’t even enter the rod contest. In the next shot, the high priest has convinced him to add his rod and all the men are huddled and waiting. What follows is The Betrothal of Mary and Joseph, with Joseph proudly holding a rod with a blossoming lily, the symbol of Mary. Joseph’s miffed contenders stand to the side, one of them breaking a rod over his knee as if to say, “Drat! I wanted to marry Mary!”

On the wall opposite Mary’s Annunciation is the Last Judgment, said to be painted by Giotto’s assistants because it doesn’t have the elegance of the master. Amidst the fires of hell is Reginaldo Scrovegni holding up a model of the chapel to the Madonna in a, “Please forgive me! Look at this pretty chapel I made for you!” gesture.

It’s good to visit the chapel knowing these stories because you’ll only have fifteen minutes inside to view the frescos. The place has been restored and a sterilized, climate-controlled environment created to preserve the frescos. Your visit begins in an antechamber where you view a fifteen-minute film about the chapel before you’re escorted in for your limited time with the masterpiece.

Scrovegni Chapel: Piazza Eremitani 8, daily 9-7. Reservations are a must, so book ahead through the website (www.cappelladegliscrovegni.it). That said, I did visit one November weekday without reserving, got a ticket for an hour later, and had pleasant waiting time strolling through the nearby Padua market.

TIP: Check the website for periodic extended visiting hours in the evenings.

How to Get There: Trains from Venice leave often, and the ride takes about a half an hour (www.trenitalia.it).

Golden Day: Visit to Scrovegni Chapel, lunch at Isola di Caprera (Via Marsilio di Padova 11/15, 049 8760244, closed Sunday) for great seafood, and caffè at the classic (since 1831) Caffè Pedrocchi (Via VIII Febbraio 15).