Italian version

Public property, accessible

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Foto Luigi Briselli

In the southern part of the city, not far from Palazzo San Sebastiano, stands Palazzo Te, a splendid suburban villa, built between 1524 and 1534 by Giulio Romano for Federico II Gonzaga, considered a jewel of Italian late Renaissance culture.

The building, which is municipal property, is today a museum and venue of the Palazzo Te International Art and Culture Centre; square plan and low, it consists of four bodies characterized by façades decorated with fake rustication with giant pilasters and columns, arranged around a central courtyard, and a large back garden enclosed by an exedra; green spaces and areas are dotted around it.

The complex is now part of the city's urban fabric; originally, however, the vast area was an island, the island of Teieto, surrounded by the waters of Lake Paiolo, a privileged place of court leisure, just outside the town walls close to Porta Pusterla which allowed it direct access. The prince’s family went there for pleasure and rest, often accompanied by guests entertained by hunting opportunities. Here, Francis II created a vast rustic complex with stables for his most precious horses and mansion, later incorporated into the villa wanted by his son Federico as a haven for leisure, a noble residence dedicated to festivals, ceremonies, large receptions, a function that was perfectly inaugurated with the sumptuous welcome of Emperor Charles V in 1530, to an incomplete palace.

Interpreting the tastes and desires of Federico II, Giulio Romano, the unique and ingenious creator, knew how to combine eccentrically, provocatively and unexpectedly the elements of the spatial and architectural composition with the splendid decorative frescos, the stuccoes of refined workmanship, the friezes in the creation of a work that, in keeping with the image of the ancient Roman villa reinterpreted by Renaissance painters, were in tune with the surrounding landscape. From the very beginning the palace and the context were seen as one: the design and interior decoration and gardens were accompanied by the reorganization of the greenery over the whole island, creating a rich and complex configuration, updated to the taste and fashion of the time in a mix of typologically diverse solutions, from the secret garden to the labyrinth, from the representative spaces to the productive areas.

Of the complex and articulated system of gardens and green areas that characterized the interior and surrounded Palazzo Te, there are still boundaries, shapes and traces that remind one of the ancient splendour. Even today, the impressive, solemn and bright Loggia di Davide looks over the great Garden of Esedra, the main garden beyond the ponds, where today the parterres are kept as simple lawns, recall a space conceived as the hortus conclusus of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, with the widespread presence of fruit trees between flowers and ornamental shrubs; a space limited by the exedra, realized during the seventeenth century as the fifth perspective but at the same time a link between the interior space of the garden and the wide surrounding expanse, long enjoyed by the court and then by the citizens as an agreeable contour to the villa.

On the sides of the exedra stand the apartment of the Secret Garden, or of the Grotto, wanted by Federico as a remote appendage of the villa dedicated to "honest idleness", and that of the Gardener where, albeit altered, a vegetable garden or a covered garden came up to us. In the Secret Apartment built in the early thirties of the sixteenth century, the loggia, entirely decorated with naturalistic elements, opens onto a small garden whose layout resembles that of the nineteenth century but restores nature to the place, a space dedicated to meditation, to the witty quotations from classical sources, to be shared with intimate friends and chosen visitors. Privacy inside the walls meant protection from outside looks, but did not want to divert the visitor's pleasure of the outside view. Fake architectural perspectives, views, pictorial or plastic images of accentuated naturalism allowed the eye to overcome physical barriers towards broad, realistic or fairy-tale horizons. The loggia that brought a miraculous effect to Federico’s small secret space, also included a small, elevated loggia still today featuring a Venetian window from which one could contemplate the picturesque expanse of exterior gardens, that have now partially disappeared or have been greatly altered.

(From  U. Bazzotti, I giardini di Palazzo Te e dell’isola del Teieto, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 288-305; P. Carpeggiani, Il labirinto di verzura sull’isola del Teieto, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 305-307)

Italian version

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Private property, accessible upon request

A few kilometres from Mantua, in Pietole (the ancient Andes), where the Latin poet Virgil was supposedly born, stands Corte Virgiliana, a large and structured architectural complex, still home to an important farm and Gonzaga style rural court. The court presents itself as an imposing body organized in various outbuildings around two large connecting courtyards, defended by through towers and boundary walls; in addition to the residential buildings, there were, in fact, all the outbuildings necessary for a large farm to breed fine horses.
Among the most famous suburban residences, a place of representation and rest after government commitments, the court of Pietole, then Virgiliana, could also be reached by water, by sailing along the river, to its northern mooring. Duke Guglielmo is attributed with the construction of the large stables while the whole complex was enhanced with "fabulous buildings" by Duke Ferdinando. It belonged to the Gonzagas until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when, once it had become wholly owned by the Imperial House, was sold to Count Zanardi and at the beginning of the 19th century to the Varano da Camerino noble family, where it underwent important demolitions and transformations. It has belonged to the Boccalari family since the end of the 19th century, who have preserved the rich architectural heritage of the complex, and, in recent times, dedicated it to tourist accommodation and agritourism.

Of the original complex the marvellous stables, the dwelling and representation building, dating back to the first half of the seventeenth century, the large courtyards and the green areas and spaces remain, the latter being a simplification of the more complex and articulated ones that characterized the Gonzaga court. In particular, the area between the stables, in the form of four parterres kept as simple lawns and partly standing on the ancient boundary, recalls the interior courtyard garden, once integrated with bordering hedges and medicinal plants and fruit trees. The western garden is no less interesting, bordered by residential buildings and a wall, smaller than the original green area, which is structured much like the end of the nineteenth or the beginning of the twentieth century, but with informal additions dating back to the second half of the 20th century.

(From C. Togliani, I giardini di Corte Virgiliana (ex Corte di Pietole), in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 197-204).

Italian version

Public property, open to the public

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Sabbioneta is a place where art has taken a most particular and unique importance in many aspects; the history of this town is inextricably linked to Vespasiano Gonzaga, one of the most extraordinary and complex figures in the history of the collateral branches of the Gonzaga family. When in power, Vespasiano decided to launch an urbanisation project that transformed the small fortified settlement into the capital of the area and an exemplary demonstration of his princeps status, and perhaps the most obvious sixteenth century attempt at implementing the ideal town.
This was when the monumental complexes that still characterise this small hamlet were built. In 1582 in particular, on the occasion of his third marriage to Margherita Gonzaga, sister of Ferrante II of Guastalla, the renovation of the Garden House began, a building complex in Piazza d'Armi, sided and integrated with the Galleria degli Antichi and what was then the Armoury and Rocca, which were later demolished, at the end of the 18th century.
The low-rising two-storey building with three portals, stretched along the facade, of which only the central one retains the original polychrome marble structure, was completed at the rear with an Italian garden called Garden of the Fountain, which is attributed to Bernardino Campi from Cremona; the original composition of which has by now been irreversibly modified. This place seems to refer to a quadrangular area with a geometrical design in which two perpendicular tree-lined avenues, created with pergolas with oak columns and, together with the tree-lined avenues of the perimeter, marked the fourfold division of the internal space where other paths probably created additional subdivisions of the four main flower-beds, probably lined by boxwood borders, all integrated with fountains, artificial grottoes and water games.
The garden was designed as a private and exclusive area, integrating and penetrating the residence’s external spaces, in a relationship marked by the decoration of the small barrel-vaulted room that takes you to the garden from the atrium, where the decorated space of the pergola, created with river reeds on which grapevines climb, with leaves, tendrils and grape bunches, opening on to the royal garden. The ancient garden grounds, as well as the boundary wall, niches and traces of ancient fountains, can still be found today, reminiscent of the original design of this exclusive and treasured location.

(From  G. Sartori, Il giardino de la fontana di Palazzo Giardino, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 407-413)

Italian version

Public property, open to the public

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The Gonzaga Bosco della Fontana is located on Highway 236, in the direction towards the town of Marmirolo, in the Mincio National Park and in the vast area immediately north of Mantua where the views are on cultivated land and irrigated meadows, dotted with many interesting ancient courts and villas built between the 18th and 19th centuries. The nature reserve, managed by the National Forestry Corps, is an area of outstanding natural beauty of the utmost importance, due to its rare and precious fragment of lowland deciduous hornbeam and oak trees, that once extended across most of the Padano-Venetian plain and which, in the Gonzaga era, had an expansion of approximately two thousand hectares, connecting the villages of Goito, Soave and Marmirolo. Today the forest occupies 233 hectares and has circular tree formations within, connected by radial tree-lined avenues following the design that dates back to the mid- 18th century. One can still find the unique building, commissioned in the late 17th century by Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga, in the centre, created by Giuseppe Dattaro from Cremona and completed by Anton Maria Viani. It was a place used for entertainment and enjoyment; the building was built on a rectangular plan with circular towers at each corner and a large tripartite central loggia surmounted by a gable that dominates the facade. The palace, surrounded by a moat conceived as a pond, was directly connected to a garden that was placed “opposite the palace with marble staircases, marble balusters and railings, and a fountain in the centre of the garden, that was all in order, with pergolas, flowers, paths and several types of fruit”. All that remains today on the large grounds, are the remnants of a central column and the stone quatrefoil basin of the fountain, adorned with statues of nautical gods and built over a natural spring, providing a name for the building and forest.

(From  C. Bonora Previdi, Il giardino della Palazzina di caccia del Bosco della Fontana, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 361-364)

Italian version

Partially public property (open to the public), partially private property (not open to the public)

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Marengo is a small town in the area of the city of Marmirolo; its layout is the result of the on-going expansion of the original settlement of the ancient and homonymous court.
It was originally a fortified site, built for the defence of important connecting routes, part of the Canossa estates in the 11th century, later donated to the abbey of San Benedetto in Polirone. In the 15th century, the complex of the Court of Marengo was offered to Guido Gonzaga, Canon of the Cathedral, Protonotary apostolic and Commendatory abbot of the abbey and therefore its Provost. Patronage on the court was established and maintained by the same family until 1707. It was incorporated in the assets of the Duchy, and the estate passed on to the Custoza Counts at the beginning of the 18th century, and recently went to the city of Marmirolo and the company Biocharme Cosmetique.
The court, whose layout is closely linked to the particular shape of the river and to artificial water ways that still mark its boundaries, occupies a large area, coinciding with a substantial part of the historical town. The main palace, the construction of which was traditionally attributed to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga, and the other buildings of the court, are the result of the progressive transformations completed mainly between the 16th and 18th centuries, including old factories, that were substantially renovated during the 19th century.
Extensive green areas for the garden were chosen next to the complex in the 16th century, in a time when the presence of Giulio Romano workers is conceivable, characterised by the presence of a large pond, which was still present in the mid-19th century as well as an ice house that can still be found today.
The current gardens and green spaces are actually a simplification of the more articulate and complex gardens of the Gonzaga court; although the main perspective axis, of the Renaissance loggia opening on to the garden and pond, is no longer there, the current layout of the green areas and the magnificent wisteria pergolas, which essentially design the formal garden between the two residences of the court, offer new perspective axis that recall the original orientation.

(From  L. Valli, I giardini della Corte di Marengo, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 349-354)

Italian version

Private property, open for visits upon request

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Next to the majestic and solemn facade of Palazzo Cavriani, bordering the ancient San Leonardo district, an area where one can still feel the aristocratic isolation, there is the equally surprising and impressive Geriatrics Institute of Monsignor Arrigo Mazzali. The facade still reveals fragments of frescoes with geometric designs to a keen eye, and in a more general observation, the palace retains the ancient U-shaped layout, which was originally built around an elegant courtyard with loggias connected to a large internal garden, “the beauty of which I dare not write” declared Raffaello Toscano in 1586. It is distinguished with the presence of a pond, an element that played a fundamental role in the history of the entire complex, and was probably built with a geometric layout, according to the style and fashion of the time, divided by flower-beds where one could find flowers, trees and hedges as well as many large and small stone vases with lemon trees, orange trees, citrons, Spanish jasmine and carnations.
The palace, known as Casa Gonzaga or Casa Abate, was built by the Bonacolsi family and inherited by the Gonzaga family from Mantua, it later went to the Gonzaga family from Luzzara, at the beginning of the 17th century, who owned the property for approximately two centuries, until 1838 when it was acquired by the Cavriani family who then sold it, in 1885, to the city of Mantua, when it was turned into the Municipal Hospital. The change of use brought many changes and functional transformations that changed the layout in certain parts.
The large garden, documented in 1545, that remained unchanged for centuries as a characteristic of Casa Gonzaga, can still be traced in some of the borders and in the grounds that still retain some of their original layout. A large green area can be found behind the palace, which, according to its design and extension, is the result of more recent expansions: a surface formed by the grounds of the old courtyard, enclosed within the walls of the U-shaped palace; the area of the original quadrangular garden with a size related to the length of the building and from the area to the rear and annexed after the demolition of the ancient boundary wall, which was part of the former Capuchin convent, subsequently used as a military hospital.

(From  C. Bonora Previdi, Il giardino di Casa Gonzaga o dell’Abate, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 331-335)

Italian version

Private property, open for visits upon request

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Villa Maraini-Guerrieri Gonzaga is located in the territory surrounding the town of Gonzaga, in a hamlet called Palidano, a small centre on the right bank of the Pò Vecchio, and it still retains its rural character. It was built during the second half of the 18th century as a summer house for the Zanardi family. It is the formal result of an important and extensive transformation campaign of the most ancient Palidano Court, one of the most financially important Gonzaga Courts.
The villa was inherited by the Guerrieri family and the Maraini Counts; it was later acquired by a real estate company in 1998; an important restoration project was launched, that was completed in 2008.
Today the complex is an important structure that hosts events, ceremonies, conventions and meetings, surrounded by an ancient park with oaks, horse chestnuts, lime trees, beeches and plane trees. The Villa is composed of an entrance hall with a Bibiena-style bell tower, outbuildings, warehouses, the magnificent barn with seventeen arches, that was already part of the ancient court, and the main L-shaped building where one finds the large square entrance hall that offers a monumental entrance from Piazza Sordello, overlooking the well sized park, which relates tangibly to the villa with its classical decorations from the end of the 18th century, with hedges, topiary arches and glimpses of formal gardens lining the walls.
The complex is characterised by an articulate system of green spaces rising on the grounds of the green areas of the most ancient court; the large park behind the villa in particular, that forms a large rectangular area containing elements of the oldest Gonzaga orchard and the eighteenth-century garden, such as the long central tree-lined avenue, which is perfectly aligned with the main axis of the villa’s grand entrance hall; it is crossed by transversal and perimeter tree-lined avenues that divide the design into large articulate rectangular areas, beyond which there is a neo-classical temple/viewpoint standing at the end of the garden in an elliptical clearing, surrounded by a small tree grove.

(From  C. Bonora Previdi, Il giardineto, l’orto e il brolo della Corte del Palidano, poi giardino di Villa Maraini-Guerrieri Gonzaga, oggi Villa Alessia, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 233-237)

Italian version

Private property

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Surrounded by cultivated fields and agricultural settlements, the villa today has an exterior appearance that belies its ancient origins, the result of an intervention in the early 1900s. Above all, the long terraces of the front and rear facades, one overlooking the main courtyard and the other the garden, break the harmonious relationship between the loggia and the upper windows and create a deceptive effect of a twentieth-century building. The extraordinary decorations, which are still partly hidden under the plaster, bring us back to the building’s origins, together with the perfect symmetry and geometric ratios of the interior distribution. Only the main hall has lost part of its grandeur with the realization of a floor that splits its height into two levels.
It is the business centre of a large agricultural estate that first belonged to the Gonzaga family, then the Guerrieri (of which remain the coat of arms on the ancient stables next to the residence), then to the Buris and finally to the Zanotti family, La Motta also included the neighbouring Corte Vecchia and Corte Nuova.
You enter the villa through a main courtyard with a flowerbed in the middle against the double ramp of the stairs that lead to the entrance loggia, around which there are an orderly number of buildings: the stables, the greenhouse behind, the 'Bugadera', the well and some service homes.
The large back garden, once completely surrounded by the moat, also used as a fish pond, occupies an area of 12 biolche [TN: local surface measure] and today is landscaped. In front of the loggia a wide and luminous central meadow area opens up, entered through two great paulownias and various ornamental species (Magnolia grandiflora, Liriodendron tulipifera and a beautiful Corylus colurna or Constantinople hazelnut), while a series of mixed groves rich in yews, shadow dales and hillocks arranged at the edge of the area. A large glacier is hidden beneath a bamboo shield and, hidden in the vegetation, imposing spectacular centuries-old trees survive: a giant Celtis australis, a large fig with numerous branches and a leafy hazel, plus three enormous yews in the main courtyard.
(Taken from Marida Brignani, in the gardens of the Gonzaga..., 2017)

Italian version

Private property

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On the west border of Novellara, heading towards Guastalla along Via Azelio, you find the Casino di Sotto on your right, situated among the first houses of the town, on your east and farmland to your north and west. The building has around two and a half hectares of connected land, what remains of the twenty-hectare estate that belonged to the Gonzaga family. The property is screened from the road to Guastalla by a box hedgerow and the entrance to the building, which is a rough L shape and has a main east-west body featuring a loggia passing through three archways (today with glass windows), is along an avenue lined by two rows of plane trees, which retraces the 16th century route and outlines the garden symmetrically. The rows of trees, with European spruce to the west and poplars to the east, are interrupted at the fence that has surrounded the garden closest to the residence since 1920, when the original moat was filled in. Beyond the gate on the right of the avenue, there is an orchard and, on the left, a lawn with trees, cut off from the surrounding countryside by a row of horse chestnuts. In front of the Casino, there are a cedar of Lebanon, some yews, black pines and a magnolia almost 100 years old. The north façade of the building looks over another portion of garden, half the length it used to be: a tree-lined lawn with two ancient hazelnuts either side of the steps leading up to the loggia. The current garden structure still reflects to a great degree that created in 1910 by a Piedmontese architect, upon commission by the Lombardini family, and subsequent changes made in the 1920s. Chosen by the Gonzaga as their preferred residence, the Casino di Sotto – already recalled in certain documents from 1502 and the subject of various renovations – was surrounded by a garden with fisheries, with avenues lined with espaliers and pergolas, statues and vases of flowers or citrus trees and, beyond the moat, by land obtained by draining the Crostolo valleys, part agricultural and part woodland. The typically Gonzaga layout of the garden and surrounding land, already reconsidered in 1700 by the will of Maria Teresa Cibo d’Este, was lost in 1800 when the Raynouard family decided to reduce the gardens and woodlands of the property to farmland.

(From  S. Torresan, Il giardino del Casino di Sotto, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 459-461)

Italian version

Private property

Around a quarter of a mile south of Novellara, on the Strada Provinciale 3, you can see the so-called Casino di Sopra, or Casino di Bell’aria, on your right, today surrounded by an estate of one and a half hectares derived from resizing the original area of land. The 16th century building, characterised at the time of its construction by four corner towers, today reduced to two, with its surrounding farm buildings, is situated in a predominantly rural area. Although not as isolated as it would once have been, given the development of an industrial area on the left of the main road, it keeps itself physically separated from the built up area, thanks in part to the drainage canal dating back to 1930 that lies between it and the road. The current garden planted at the start of the 1900s and reorganized around 1950, features two tree-lined lawns that lie in front of the main entrance to the Casino, surrounded by plants; there are a few oaks that date back to the early 1900s, cypresses, yews, a horse chestnut and a sophora. The perimeter of the garden features a rose garden of ancient and rustic varieties. On the path to the gate to the villa, beyond the garden, two rows of young mulberries have been planted, leading as far as the canal, to restore the perspective of the ancient access road. The digging of the canal in 1930 caused the demolition of the ancient road of access to the property, north and south of which once stood the San Lorenzo oratory and the guard’s house, connected by a loggia, beyond which the avenue began. The complex, made up of the residence and numerous outbuildings, was commissioned by the wife of Count Alessandro Gonzaga di Novellara, Costanza da Correggio, between 1541 and 1542. The estate was completed, as is proven by a description from 1595, by around five hectares of land: gardens, orchards, vegetable gardens and woodland, with avenues lined with columns, pillars, espaliers or pergolas and decorated at their crossroads with small pavilions with cupolas, fisheries, a lily pond, a fountain and a scenic area; a hunting lodge and cultivated land. Today, there is nothing remaining of the original system, aside from a few traces of sediment.

(From  S. Torresan, Il giardino del Casino di Sopra o di Bell'aria, anche di San Lorenzo, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 456-459)