Palazzo Ducale, Mantua — palace
Velvet · CC BY-SA 4.0

Palazzo Ducale, Mantua

Palazzo Ducale

  • 2 min read
  • 45.160° N 10.799° E

Interesting facts

  • The embalmed body of Rinaldo 'Passerino' Bonacolsi, killed when the Gonzaga seized Mantua in 1328, was long displayed in the palace on a stuffed hippopotamus.
  • Passerino's mummy was thrown into the lake around 1700, but the hippopotamus survived and has been kept since 1783 in the natural history museum at Pavia.
  • A miniature copy of Rome's Scala Sancta, built for Duke Ferdinando, was believed for centuries to be lodgings for court dwarfs until archival research disproved it in 1979.
  • Nine Flemish tapestries in the palace were woven from Raphael's cartoons for the Sistine Chapel and bought in Brussels by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga around 1552.
  • Pisanello's lost Arthurian frescoes were found in the 1960s after superintendent Giovanni Paccagnini spotted traces of painting in the attic above the room.
  • The Galleria della Mostra, built to display the Gonzaga collections, has a wooden ceiling about 64 metres long and nearly 7 metres wide.
  • The Hall of the Armory, a single room measuring 67 by 15 metres, hosted the Diet of Mantua in 1459.
  • Short of money, the Gonzaga sold many of their finest paintings to Charles I of England, and much of what remained was lost in the sack of Mantua in 1630.
  • The paintings Isabella d'Este commissioned from Mantegna, Perugino and Lorenzo Costa for her studiolo now hang in the Louvre.
  • The Hanging Garden, laid out for Duke Guglielmo in the late 16th century, lies some 12 metres above the ground.

Why it is worth it

The Ducal Palace of Mantua is not one building but a small city of palaces, courtyards, galleries and gardens, assembled over several centuries by the Gonzaga, who ruled Mantua as lords, marquesses and dukes from the 14th century to the early 18th. With more than 500 rooms, seven gardens and eight courtyards spread over some 35,000 square metres, it ranks among the largest palace complexes in Europe, and its walls and ceilings hold some of the finest art of the Italian Renaissance.

The oldest part, the Corte Vecchia, grew from the medieval Palazzo del Capitano and Magna Domus, which already served as the seat of the city's rulers in 1308. The Castello di San Giorgio, a moated brick castle with four corner towers, was built between 1395 and 1406 by Bartolino da Novara. Successive generations added to the complex: Luca Fancelli built the Domus Nova in 1480–84, Giulio Romano created the Corte Nuova from 1536, and from 1556 Giovanni Battista Bertani worked to unify the scattered buildings, also designing the palace church of Santa Barbara (1562–72).

The most famous room is the Camera degli Sposi in one of the castle towers, painted by Andrea Mantegna between about 1465 and 1474 for Ludovico III Gonzaga. Its walls show the marquis among his family and court, and its ceiling opens, in a painted illusion, onto a round oculus of blue sky where putti and figures lean over a balustrade and look down on the visitor, a pioneering use of foreshortening seen from below that later inspired Correggio and the painters of the baroque. Elsewhere in the palace are Pisanello's chivalric frescoes on Arthurian themes, painted in the 1430s and rediscovered only in the 1960s, Rubens' large canvas of the Gonzaga family adoring the Holy Trinity (1604–05), and the apartments of Isabella d'Este, one of the great patrons of the Renaissance. Mantua, a compact city surrounded on three sides by lakes formed by the Mincio River, was inscribed together with Sabbioneta on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008.

Getting there

The Ducal Palace stands on Piazza Sordello in the historic centre of Mantua, within walking distance of Mantova railway station. The nearest airport is Verona Villafranca (VRN), about 27 km away.

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Lombardy 21The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Beautiful Palaces in Italy 9The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses in Italy 22The Most Beautiful Palaces 91The Most Beautiful Castles, Palaces and Fortresses 302

From the encyclopaedia

The Palazzo Ducale in Mantua, also known as the Gonzaga Palace, is one of the city's main historic buildings. From 1308, it served as the official residence of the Lords of Mantua, initially the Bonacolsi, and later the main residence of the Gonzaga, who were lords, marquesses, and eventually dukes of the Virgilian city. It housed the reigning Gonzaga, his wife, their legitimate firstborn son, other legitimate children until adulthood, and notable guests. It was designated the Royal Palace during the Austrian domination starting from the reign of Maria Theresa.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

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