March 8: at the Ducal Palace in Mantua guided and illustrated tours of the places of Isabella d'Este

On Friday, March 8, on the occasion of Women’s Day, all women will have free admission to museums, archaeological parks and other state-run cultural venues. Among them, the Ducal Palace in Mantua also offers themfree admission, but also offers the guided tour On the Traces of Isabella d’Este, departing at 9:30 a.m. and repeated at 11:30 a.m. (duration about 75 minutes, reservations via phone at 0376 352100 active number from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.).

A guided tour that aims to delve into the female figures of the past who have profoundly contributed to Italian art and culture. Deserving a place of honor is Isabella d’Este (Ferrara, May 17, 1474 - Mantua, Feb. 13, 1539), a cultured collector, patron of the arts, influential in the field of fashion as well as a skilled manager of power at the Gonzaga court. Isabella was among the most influential women of her era, to the point of earning the epithet “Primadonna of the Renaissance.” She lived at the Ducal Palace in Mantua, and many rooms in the Gonzaga complex still bear her traces .

Registration for the accompanied and illustrated tour is compulsory and is possible while places last. All women participate free of charge; others can sign up with an entrance ticket of 5 euros or more or with one of the museum’s passes. The meeting point is near the Ducal Palace ticket office in Piazza Sordello 40. Some of the stops will be within the tour route open to the public, while others will be in places that are usually closed, thus making “On the Trails of Isabella d’Este” an opportunity both to learn more about Isabella d’Este and to discover some of the lesser-known rooms of the Ducal Palace of Mantua.

When Isabella arrived in Mantua in 1490 as the bride of Francesco II Gonzaga, she went to live in an apartment on the main floor of the Castle of San Giorgio of which some rooms still remain intact: the Studiolo and the Grotta below, in one of the towers facing the lake. In the Grotto is still preserved the large wooden vault built by the Mola brothers in about 1506, in which the depiction of the so-called “enterprise” of the breaks is repeated. The feats were symbolic depictions that referred to moral exhortations and defined the virtues of the lords who made them their own. The enterprise of pauses is made Isabella’s own: it is possible to understand it as an exhortation to contemplative silence, as an act of love toward listening to the “voices of the world” or more simply to music.

The stages at the Castello di San Giorgio conclude with passage through the Camerini della Paleologa, originally inside the palazzina designed by Giulio Romano whose construction led to the modification of the morphology of the first Isabella apartment. The tour continues through the museum’s tour itinerary and then concludes at the widow’s apartment. Upon the death of her husband Francis II, Isabella moved to the ground floor of Corte Vecchia, where she had a new, larger apartment set up. Some of the rooms, starting with the Scalcheria Room, the Grotto, the Studiolo and the Secret Garden, are still well preserved today although lacking the artistic masterpieces that adorned them and represent the concluding point of the Ducal Palace museum tour. Alongside the many Isabellian symbols and mottos, including the famous “nec spe, nec metu” (without hope or fear), is the magnificent portal carved by Gian Cristoforo Romano and the exquisite wooden inlays that held his collections of rare and precious objects.

March 8: at the Ducal Palace in Mantua guided and illustrated tours of the places of Isabella d'Este

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