Today we celebrate Mantua, capital of culture in 2016 and above all its palace, Ducal Palace. A real full immersion ours, in one of the most beautiful mansions in Italy and a symbol of the power of the gods Gonzaga. Among famous artists such as the Mantegna and wonderful frescoes on the Zodiac, we will walk the corridors of the building which is said to be inhabited also by famous ghosts ... Happy reading!
Palazzo Ducale: an Italian beauty famous all over the world
Al 40 in Piazza Sordello in Mantua, walking on insidious but beautiful cobblestones, we find the entrance to one of the most fascinating palaces in the world: Palazzo Ducale. Furthermore, with its 35.000 square meters of surface, it is fully classified as one of the largest monumental complexes in Europe. Symbol of the power of the Gonzagas, the royal palace it was actually born with i Boncolsi, the first lords of Mantua. At the time of the Ghibellines Boncolsi, that is, in the XNUMXth century, distinct and separate rooms were built which were then connected to each other only with the Dukes of Gonzaga.
The oldest nucleus of the palace, which later became royal under the Austrian domination, is the Old Court. In short, the sumptuous Lombard residence is a set of different eras of construction that have finally created an artistic unicum of great impact. Just think of the gorgeous ones, among other things Flemish tapestries, created on the basis of the drawings of the great Raffaello Sanzio. Not to mention the rooms pictae, including the Room of the Spouses painted from Mantegna.
The Hall of the Zodiac: under the stars of Mantua
Continuing our tour of the Doge's Palace, we enter a magical place of rare artistic and architectural beauty: the Hall of the Zodiac. This is one of the three pictae rooms of the palace, together with the famous Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi and the Sala dei Giganti. Entering this wing of the Doge's Palace, we can thus admire the constellations on a ceiling masterfully decorated with gold stars and representations of the zodiac signs.
A luminous Apollo on the chariot of the Sun, guides this hypnotic dance of stars, which gently forces the visitor to remain with the nose up, completely bewitched by the frescoes. The unmistakable smell of the ancient wood of the window frames then gives way to an external perfume: a half-open window reveals a secret garden. And the Garden of Simple.
The Garden of the Simples of the Doge's Palace
A splendid garden opens into a square courtyard in the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua. It is about the Garden of Simple, also called the Garden of the Pavilion. This very fragrant green lung was designed in 1603 by Zenobio Bocchi, Florentine religious and botanist of the sixteenth century. Fra Zenobio had been called to court by the Gonzagas and, inspired by the zodiac, a recurring theme among other things in the frescoes of the palace, he created something spectacular.
Being a plant expert, Bocchi divided the garden into four flower beds grown with medicinal herbs. The arrangement had a high symbolic value, because it was thought that these herbs balanced the four temperaments of the medicine of the time: phlegmatic, choleric, melancholy and sanguine. Strolling in the Giardino dei Semplici means immersing yourself in a sixteenth-century atmosphere and inebriating yourself with the scent of iris, admiring the box hedges. We keep walking and the story of ancient legends about the presence of famous ghosts pushes us to deepen their history ...
The legend of the ghost of Agnese Visconti, tormented soul of the Doge's Palace
A fascinating history and a mysterious legend surround the Doge's Palace. Let's talk about his famous ghost, or of Agnes Visconti. In fact, it is said that the lamentations of this tormented soul can still be heard today, at night, in the corridors of the palace ... But let's go step by step, retracing the sad story of this woman. At the time of Louis II Gonzaga, the Mantuan family enjoyed great prestige and it was normal for them to make alliances with other powerful families. And so, Ludovico organized his son's wedding Francis I. with Agnese Visconti, daughter of an important Milanese family. The boys were very young when they married: he was fourteen, she was seventeen.
The lack of a male heir, given that Agnese had a daughter, Alda, by Francesco, only made relations worse. All this up to the climax, the killing of Agnese's father by the usurper Gian Galeazzo Visconti who took Milan. After the tragedy of the paternal assassination, Agnese suffered another pain: her husband Francesco allied himself with Gian Galeazzo. At this point, the woman was one too many in Gonzaga's life, who falsely accused her of adultery with a knight. On February 7, 1391, the two alleged lovers were executed: the knight was hanged and poor Agnes beheaded and buried in unconsecrated ground. It is said that since then, the lady Visconti wanders damned, infesting the Doge's Palace ...
We hope that this tour among the beauties of Palazzo Ducale in Mantua you enjoyed it, dear readers! A virtual journey for the moment, waiting for the situation Covid-19 better and that you can go back to life, enjoying again a nice visit to a museum.
