If you enter Mantua from the north-east, across the bridge over the misty waters that surround it on three sides, the city seems to float like a golden mirage. With its high brick walls, cupolas and towers, miradors, loggias and red-tiled roofs, it is more like a Renaissance architectural fantasy than a living city of the 21st century.
It’s difficult to tell where the palaces end and the rest of the city begins. Even the biggest square, Piazza Sordello, was originally part of the Palazzo Ducale. What is clear, however, is that its most spectacular monuments were built mainly in the 15th and 16th centuries under the patronage of one ruling family: the Gonzagas.

Founded by the Etruscans and named after an Etruscan divinity, Mantua’s first claim to fame was as the home of the poet Virgil, born nearby in 70BC. His benevolent statue sits in a niche on the Palazzo del Podesta in the Piazza del Broletto. It seems to have acquired the status of a saint or a magician.

The Gonzaga family (famous as horse breeders and merchants) gained control of the city after a bloody revolt in 1328. Like many nouveaux riches, the Gonzagas built magnificent palaces, employed the most famous artists of the times (from Pisanello to Mantegna, Giulio Romano to Tintoretto and Rubens), got educated, married well and rewrote their own family history!

The last Duke of Gonzaga eventually fled and, in 1707, Mantua fell to Austria, which more or less maintained control until the city became part of a united Italy in 1866.

Losing yourself in history

You need every ounce of energy to attack the Palazzo Ducale, a labyrinthine 3-D realisation of an Escher print, which extends over several buildings (incorporating the earlier Palazzo del Capitano built by the unfortunate Bonacolsi and the fortified Castello di San Giorgio), with 15 courtyards, squares and gardens, covering a total area of 34,000 square metres.

Treasures include fragments of a magnificent Pisanello fresco, depicting battle scenes from the Arthurian legends; tapestries woven according to designs by Raphael; and paintings by Tintoretto and Rubens.

The Camera degli Sposi was a meeting room painted by Mantegna from 1465-74 for Ludovico II Gonzaga and his wife Barbara di Brandenburg. The whole room is covered in courtly scenes while people, angels and putti look down from a trompe l’oeil balcony in a blue sky.

Time for te

If the Palazzo Ducale is the result of centuries of additions and adaptations, with a heavy emphasis on power, the Palazzo Te could not be more different, created on the outskirts of the city on reclaimed marshland as a pleasure palace for horse-riding and summer entertainment.

It was built in under 10 years, from 1526-35, by Giulio Romano, a pupil of Raphael, for Federico II Gonzaga and has a lightness and frivolity that is like breath of fresh air. But it turned out to be a suitable place both for Federico’s trysts with his mistress, Isabella Boschetti and for entertaining on a grand scale.

High mannerist in design, the palace was as fashionable and bizarre as times would permit.
The building features elaborate architectural jokes and ‘ancient’ grottoes, but to wander through its rooms is to enter a fantasy world.
Vast portraits of Federico’s favourite horses decorate one room, while the adjoining Camera di Psiche (Hall of Psyche) is covered in extremely explicit erotic paintings from the Golden Ass by Apuleius.

The Palazzo Te has many other interesting rooms as well as a fine archaeological collection, but, after the Sala dei Giganti, everything is an anticlimax and mental indigestion means that it’s time to explore other aspects of the city.

Exploring further

Take your time to:

• Visit the clock tower in the Piazza Erbe and the huge Basilica of Sant'Andrea in the Piazza Mantegna: these two squares are full of small boutiques and speciality shops, tempting pasticcerie and cafés.

• Eat local specialities such as ravioli di zucca (pumpkin ravioli) in the Piazza Erbe, watching the food and flower market pack up at lunchtime, is one of the great joys of visiting this city.

• Make boat excursions in the Mantua hinterland:

  • in the River Mincio, with its river side paths and protected natural park.

  • in the water behind the Sanctuary of the Beata Vergine delle Grazie (just 12 kms west fo Mantua), where in August, you can see the lotus flowers in bloom.

Truly, it is a magical way to end your stay.