Why does Giovanni Guasconti move to Padua?

Giovanni Guasconti, a
young man, comes to Padua, a city in northern Italy, from somewhere to the south, in order to
attend college at the University of Padua.He finds a place to stay in a very old building which
might have, at some point in its earlier and more well-kept days, been the palace of the local
noble family whose coat of arms is painted above the entrance.Giovanni recalls a story about
this same family: that one of the ancestors was somehow associated with Dante and the
Inferno.This association does not bode well for the fate of either Giovanni or the other people
in the home: Doctor Rappaccini and his daughter, the beautiful but deadly Beatrice.

Giovanni soon meets Signor Pietro Baglioni, a medical professor at the university and
long-time friend of Giovanni's father, and Giovanni brings to the a well-known doctor a letter
of introduction.Professor Baglioni seems like an agreeable enough person, but when Giovanni asks
him about Doctor Rappaccini, assuming that there must be some camaraderie among professionals in
the same field, Baglioni expresses an intense dislike of Rappaccini.Though Baglioni admits that
Rappaccini is incredibly smart and capable, he also claims that Rappaccini cares much more about
science than he does about people.