Things to Do in Mantua

Piazza delle Erbe is the beating heart of Mantua’s elegant Renaissance historic center. It is also home to three of the UNESCO World Heritage–listed city’s most famous monuments: the 13th-century civic hall, Palazzo della Ragione; Bartolomeo Manfredi’s 15th-century clock tower; and the 11th-century Rotonda di San Lorenzo, the city’s oldest church.

Te Palace (Palazzo Te) is a half-hour’s enjoyable walk from the heart of gorgeous Mantua, a wonderfully OTT summer palace built for Federico II Gonzaga between 1525 and 1535. Designed by Renaissance architect Giulio di Piero Pippi de’ Iannuzzi (known as Romano), the palace was Federico’s retreat from royal life, which centered on the Palazzo Ducale in Piazza Sordello. A seemingly endless series of lavishly adorned apartments were decorated by leading artists of the day and reflect his pet obsessions with love, horses and astrology, from statuesque equine portraits in the Hall of the Horses to alarmingly suggestive frescoes by Romano in the Chamber of Amor and Psyche.

The palazzo was also built to remind the great unwashed of Mantua who held political supremacy over them; the vast and fantastically ornate Sala dei Giganti (Room of the Giants) is a metaphor for Gonazga power, which sees Titan overthrown by the gods in a dazzling trompe l’oeil that creates the illusion that the ceiling is collapsing. Tucked away among the upper floors of Palazzo Te is the town’s Museo Civico, where displays include a jumble of armory, medals, coins and Egyptian artifacts along with Gonzaga family portraits by 20th-century artist Armando Spadini.

The extensive formal gardens include loggias, a shell-encrusted grotto, stuccowork cloisters, fish ponds and Federico’s pretty garden retreat.

For centuries, Mantua’s vast Palazzo Ducale was the seat of the Gonzaga dynasty, one of the most powerful during the Renaissance. Explore dozens of the palace’s sumptuous rooms (there are 500 in all), admiring art and lavishly decorated halls such as the whimsically frescoed Camera degli Sposi.