Wingsch Real Estate Investments   

Theme Week Lombardy – Mantua

Friday, 28 November 2014 - 01:00 pm (CET/MEZ) Berlin | Author/Destination: European Union / Europäische Union
Category/Kategorie: General, UNESCO World Heritage Reading Time:  4 minutes

🔊 Listen to this Post Mantua is a city and comune with 49,000 inhabitants, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2007, Mantua’s centro storico (old town) and Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. Mantua’s historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family has made it one of the main artistic, cultural, and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera; the city is also known for its architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces, and the medieval and Renaissance cityscape. It is the place where the composer Monteverdi premiered his opera L’Orfeo and where Romeo was banished in Shakespeare‘s play Romeo and Juliet. It is the nearest town to the birthplace of the Roman poet Virgil, who was commemorated by a statue at the lakeside park “Piazza Virgilio”.

Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes, created during the 12th century, as the city’s defence system. These lakes receive the water of River Mincio, a tributary of the Po which descends from Lake Garda. The three lakes are called Lago Superiore, Lago di Mezzo, and Lago Inferiore (“Upper”, “Middle”, and “Lower” Lakes, respectively). A fourth lake, Lake Pajolo, which once completed a defensive water ring of the city, was dried up at the end of the 18th century.

The area and its environs are important not only in naturalistic terms, but also anthropologically and historically; research has highlighted a number of human settlements scattered between Barche di Solferino and Bande di Cavriana, Castellaro and Isolone del Mincio. These dated, without interruption, from Neolithic times (5th–4th millennium BC) to the Bronze Age (2nd–1st millennium BC) and the Gallic phases (2nd–1st centuries BC), and ended with Roman residential settlements, which could be traced to the 3rd century AD.

The Gonzagas protected the arts and culture, and were hosts to several important artists such as Leone Battista Alberti, Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, Donatello, Peter Paul Rubens, Pisanello, Domenico Fetti, Luca Fancelli and Nicolò Sebregondi. Though many of the masterworks have been dispersed, the cultural value of Mantua is nonetheless outstanding, with many of Mantua’s patrician and ecclesiastical buildings being uniquely important examples of Italian architecture.

Here you can find the complete Overview of all Theme Weeks.

Read more on City of Mantua, Mantua Tourism, unesco.org – Mantua and Sabbioneta, agriturismo.it – Mantua and Wikipedia Mantua. Learn more about the use of photos. To inform you about latest news most of the city, town or tourism websites offer a newsletter service and/or operate Facebook pages/Twitter accounts. In addition more and more destinations, tourist organizations and cultural institutions offer Apps for your Smart Phone or Tablet, to provide you with a mobile tourist guide (Smart Traveler App by U.S. Department of State - Weather report by weather.com - Global Passport Power Rank - Travel Risk Map - Democracy Index - GDP according to IMF, UN, and World Bank - Global Competitiveness Report - Corruption Perceptions Index - Press Freedom Index - World Justice Project - Rule of Law Index - UN Human Development Index - Global Peace Index - Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Index). If you have a suggestion, critique, review or comment to this blog entry, we are looking forward to receive your e-mail at comment@wingsch.net. Please name the headline of the blog post to which your e-mail refers to in the subject line.

---

Recommended posts:

• Theme Week Lombardy – Varese
• Theme Week Umbria – Castiglione del Lago
• Theme Week Lombardy
• Riva del Garda on Lake Garda
• The Lake Como
• Theme Week Tibet – Yamdrok Lake
• Rieti, the midpoint of Italy
• Theme Week Lombardy – Cremona
• Theme Week Lombardy – Desenzano del Garda
• Theme Week Patagonia – Los Glaciares National Park
• Scicli on Sicily
• Theme Week Emilia-Romagna – Forlì
• Theme Week Sicily – Syrakus
• Tournai in Wallonia
• Bergamo in Lombardy