Mantua, guided tours on the trail of Isabella d'Este at the Ducal Palace

From February 24 to April 1, 2023, the Ducal Palace in Mantua is organizing guided tours every Friday and Saturday to discover the places of Isabella d’Este (Ferrara, 1474 - Mantua, 1539), the famous marquise.

A cultured collector, demanding patron of the arts, influential in the field of fashion as well as skilled in the management of power at the Gonzaga court, Isabella was among the most influential women of her time, to the point of earning the epithet “Primadonna of the Renaissance.” Isabella lived within the walls of Mantua’s Ducal Palace, and despite the centuries that have passed and the many historical vicissitudes, many places in the great Gonzaga complex still bear the physical traces left by her strong personality.

To celebrate her, the Ducal Palace is organizing accompanied and illustrated tours by the museum’s reception and security staff, entitled On the Trails of Isabella d’Este, which will be offered every Friday and Saturday with four daily departures (9:30 a.m., 11:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.). You can register by calling 0376 352100 (number operating Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.).Registration is compulsory and is allowed while places last; you can participate for free with a 5-euro admission ticket or more or with one of the museum’s passes. The meeting is for the chosen day and time near the entrance to the museum route, in Piazza Castello adjacent to the porticoed exedra. Given the complex articulation of the Ducal Palace and its monumental nature, we anticipate that some parts of the route could not be made accessible to the public with motor disabilities.

Some anticipation: some stops will be within the tour route open to the public, while others will be in places usually closed. On the trail of Isabella d’Este will be an opportunity both to deepen one’s knowledge of the marquise’s historical character 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 “feat” of pauses (or silence) is repeated. The feats were symbolic depictions that referred to moral exhortations and defined the virtues of the lords (or, in this case, ladies) who made them their own. The enterprise of pauses is made Isabella’s own: we can 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 Castle of San Giorgio conclude with passage through the Camerini della Paleologa, originally within the mansion designed by Giulio Romano whose construction led to the modification of the morphology of the first Isabellian apartment. The tour continues through the museum’s tour itinerary and 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 even though they are devoid of the artistic masterpieces that adorned them and represent the concluding point of the Ducal Palace museum tour. Next to the numerous Isabellian symbols and mottos, including the famous “nec spe, nec metu” (without hope or fear), we can certainly mention the magnificent portal carved by Gian Cristoforo Romano and the refined wooden inlays that guarded his collections of rare and precious objects.

This and much more will be recounted during visits to discover the marquise.

Mantua, guided tours on the trail of Isabella d'Este at the Ducal Palace

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