The city is included, with Venice (Italian Venezia), in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area, population 1,600,000. Its agricultural setting is the Pianura Padovana, the "Paduan plain," edged by the Euganaean Hills praised by Lucan and Martial, Petrarch, Ugo Foscolo, and Shelley. The city is picturesque, with a dense network of arcaded streets opening into large communal piazze, and many bridges crossing the various branches of the Bacchiglione, which once surrounded the ancient walls like a moat. Padua is the setting for most of the action in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew.