Mantova is surrounded by water on three sides, three artificial lakes created by the Gonzaga dukes who controlled the city from 1328 to 1707 by damming the Mincio River to create an island fortress accessible only by controlled bridges. This hydraulic security investment has given Mantova the most cinematically isolated historic center in Lombardy: approaching from the Ponte dei Mulini on a clear morning, with the lake mist and the towers of the Palazzo Ducale rising through it, the city looks exactly as it did in the fifteenth-century paintings that the Gonzaga commissioned from Mantegna to document their world.
The Gonzaga were among the most significant patrons of the Italian Renaissance. Andrea Mantegna, the painter who perfected foreshortening and brought Roman antiquity into Renaissance painting with unprecedented archaeological precision, lived and worked in Mantova for forty-seven years (1460-1506) in a house the Gonzaga built for him adjacent to the Palazzo Ducale. The Camera degli Sposi (Bridal Chamber) that Mantegna painted in the Castello di San Giorgio (the fortified northeast corner of the Palazzo Ducale) between 1465 and 1474 is the first completely illusionistic room in European art history, all four walls and the ceiling painted as a continuous fiction, the walls appearing to open onto landscapes where the Gonzaga family and their court stand in specific portrait likeness, the ceiling appearing to be a circular opening to the sky through which putti and women lean over to watch the room below.
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What to See in Mantova
Camera degli Sposi. Mantegna's Masterwork
In the northeast tower of the Castello di San Giorgio, accessed through the Palazzo Ducale complex, the Camera degli Sposi is a small (approximately 8x8 meters) room entirely painted by Mantegna as a continuous illusionistic environment. The east wall shows the Gonzaga marquis Ludovico II receiving a letter in the midst of his court. The west wall shows him greeting the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. The ceiling oculus (the circular opening with putti peering down) is the most technically ambitious element, a trompe l'oeil that had no precedent in Western art and wasn't surpassed for a century. Advance booking required. The room is visited in small timed groups.
Mantova: tours & tickets
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See availability & prices →We may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.Palazzo Te. Giulio Romano's Erotic and Political Fantasy
The Palazzo Te, built between 1524 and 1534 by the mannerist architect and painter Giulio Romano (Raphael's principal student and successor in Rome) for Federico II Gonzaga, is the most elaborately decorated suburban villa of the Italian Renaissance. The Sala dei Giganti (Room of the Giants) has a complete wall-and-ceiling fresco of the Giants being crushed by Jupiter, the figures tumbling toward the viewer from every surface of the room, the architecture apparently collapsing around them, that is the most extreme example of total illusionistic decoration before the Baroque period. The Sala di Psiche has ceiling and wall frescoes of extraordinary erotic content, painted for private entertainments of the Gonzaga court. The building and its program are openly acknowledged as propaganda for Federico's power and sexuality.
Palazzo Ducale. Europe's Largest Palace Complex
The Palazzo Ducale isn't one building but a series of buildings, palaces, churches, towers, gardens, and connecting passages accumulated over four centuries of Gonzaga expansion, covering approximately 34,000 square meters and containing more than 500 rooms. The rooms open to visitors include the Appartamento degli Arazzi (Flemish tapestries based on Raphael cartoons, got in the sixteenth century), the Sala di Manto (the mythological founding of Mantova), and the Camera degli Sposi in the Castello. The Gonzaga collection, which included Mantegna's own paintings plus an extraordinary assemblage of Roman antiquities, was largely sold to Charles I of England in 1627 (the Gonzaga Sale, considered one of the greatest art transactions in history), then seized by the Commonwealth and dispersed. What remains in Mantova is significant. What left is now in museums across Europe.
Q&A: Mantova
How do I get to Mantova?
By train: regional trains from Verona (approximately 40 minutes), from Milan via Cremona (approximately 2 hours), and from Modena (approximately 1 hour). Mantova isn't on the high-speed network. All connections are regional. By car: A22 motorway to Mantova exit (from Verona approximately 40 km, from Bologna approximately 100 km).
Is Mantova worth an overnight stay?
Yes. The city after 7pm, when the day-trippers from Verona and Milan have returned, empties into a specific evening quiet that is one of the most pleasant in Lombard Italy. The restaurants serving Mantovano cooking (tortelli di zucca, pumpkin and amaretti stuffed pasta, a sweet-savory combination specific to this city. Risotto alla pilota with pork sausage. Sbrisolona almond tart) are at their best for dinner. The lakes catch the last light. The Palazzo Ducale is illuminated at night.
What Nobody Tells You About Mantova
Mantova is the birthplace of Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70-19 BC), the Latin poet whose Aeneid is the founding epic of Roman civilization was born in Andes, a village now identified with Pietole near Mantova. The city maintains a modest Vergilian pride that surfaces in street names and in the specific framing of the Roman heritage of the Palazzo Ducale, but the Vergil connection is rarely mentioned in standard tourist information about Mantova. The city that Vergil makes the protagonist of a moving Purgatorio canto in Dante's Divine Comedy ("Mantua me genuit". Mantua bore me, the inscription Dante has Vergil apply to himself) is this city, and walking through it with the Aeneid in mind adds a dimension the Renaissance art alone can't provide.
Internal Links
- Mantegna in the History of Renaissance Art
- Palazzo Ducale Venice: The Comparable Political Palace
- Verona to Mantova by Train: Short Scenic Connection
- Italian Mannerism: Giulio Romano Before the Baroque
- Mantovano Food Souvenirs: Sbrisolona and Tortelli
- Bergamo: Another Lombard City Worth Adding
- Padova: Mantegna's Ovetari Chapel, Now Lost
