Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

A twenty-minute achievement from the centre of Mantua, at the end of the long spine of Via Principe Amedeo and Via Acerbi, the Palazzo Te is the later of the city’s two Gonzaga palaces, and equally compelling in its way; and you can take in a few of Mantua’s more minor attractions on the way there. The first thing to look at on the way is Giulio Romano’s Fish Market , to the left off Piazza Martiri Belfiori, a short covered bridge over the river, which is still used as a market building. Following Via Principe Amedeo south, the Casa di Giulio Romano , off to the right at Via Poma 18, overshadowed by the monster-studded Palazzo di Giustizia, was also designed by Romano - like much of his Mantuan work, it was meant to impress the sophisticated, who would have found the licence taken with the Classical rules of structure witty and amusing. A five-minute achievement away on busy Via Giovanni Acerbi, the more austere brick Casa del Mantegna was also designed by the artist, both as a home and private museum, and is now used as a contemporary art-space and conference centre (during exhibitions regular 10am-12.30pm & 3-6pm). Across the road, the church of San Sebastiano (Tues-Sun 10am-12.30pm & 4-6pm; L3000/¬1.55) was the work of Alberti, and is famous as the first Renaissance church to be built on a central Greek cross plan, described as “curiously pagan” by Nicholas Pevsner. Lodovico II’s son was less polite: “I could not understand whether it was meant to turn out as a church, a mosque or a synagogue.” Its days as a consecrated building are over and it now contains commemorative plaques forming a monument to the fallen Mantuan soldiers of World War II.

At the end of Via Giovanni Acerbi, crossways Viale Te, the Palazzo Te (Mon 1-6pm, Tues-Sun 9am-6pm; L12,000/¬6.20) was designed for playboy Federico Gonzaga and his mistress, Isabella Boschetta, by Giulio Romano; it’s the artist/architect’s greatest work and a renowned Renaissance pleasure dome. When the palace was built, Te - or Tejeto, as it used to be known - was an island connected to the mainland by bridge, an saint location for an amorous retreat away from Federico’s wife and the restrictions of life in the Palazzo Ducale. Built around a square courtyard originally occupied by a labyrinth, these days it houses modest but appealing collections of Egyptian artefacts and modern art, although the main reason for visiting is to see Giulio’s amazing decorative scheme.

A tour of the palace is like a voyage around Giulio’s imagination, a sumptuous world where very little is what it seems. In the Camera del Sole e delle Luna , the sun and the moon are represented by a pair of horse-drawn chariots viewed from below, giving a fine array of bottoms on the ceiling; in the Sala dei Cavalli , dedicated to the prime specimens from the Gonzaga stud-farm (which was also on the island), portraits of horses stand before an illusionistic background in which simulated marble, imitation pilasters and mock reliefs surround views of painted landscapes through nonexistent windows. The function of the Sala di Psiche , further on, is undocumented, but the sultry frescoes, and the closeness to Federico’s private quarters, might give a few clues, the ceiling paintings telling the story of Cupid and Psyche with some more dizzying “sotto in su” (from the bottom up) works by Giulio, among others clumsily executed by his pupils. On the walls, too, are spirited pieces, covered with orgiastic wedding-feast scenes, at which drunk and languishing gods in various states of undress are attended by a menagerie of real and mythical beasts. Don’t miss the severely incontinent river-god in the background, included either as a punning reference to Giulio’s second name, Pippi (The Pisser), or as encouragement to Federico who, according to his doctors, suffered from the “obstinate retention of urine”. Other scenes show Mars and Venus having a bath, Olympia about to be raped by a half-serpentine Jupiter and Pasiphae disguising herself as a cow in order to seduce a bull - all watched over by the giant Polyphemus, perched above the fireplace, clutching the pan-pipes with which he sang of his love for Galatea before murdering her lover.

Polyphemus and his fellow giants are revenged in the extraordinary Sala dei Giganti beyond - “the most fantastic and frightening creation of the whole Renaissance”, according to the critic Frederick Hartt - showing the destruction of the giants by the gods. As if at some kind of advanced disaster movie, the destruction appears to be all around: cracking pillars, toppling brickwork, and screaming giants, mangled and crushed by great chunks of architecture, appearing to crash down into the room. Stamp your feet and you’ll discover another parallel to twentieth-century cinema - the sound-effects that Giulio created by making the room into an reflexion chamber.

Tags: acerbi, art space, bridge over the river, classical rules, contemporary art, covered bridge, fish market, giovanni, giulio romano, gonzaga, mantegna, mantua, martiri, palaces, palazzo di giustizia, piazza, poma, principe amedeo, private museum, spine