SABBIONETA
Lombardy Duke's Italian Renaissance Walled City
It’s
a sleepy little place, now a stop over on the road from Mantua to Parma,
where its red stone walls, jutted with sharp corners
like a
star imbedded in the earth, attract your eyes as you travel by. A small
narrow arched gate through the wall takes into from the modern everyday
world of Northern Italy farmlands into the middle of the 16th Century.
Of course, Sabbioneta is living town with the requisite parking signs
and park benches in the square, but almost a lost world that time forgot.
Sabbioneta
claims its place in Renaissance history as the first planned walled
city built as the personal project of one man, a Lombardy Duke,
Vespasiano di Gonzaga. Originally intended to be a city of ideal dreams,
based on the grand societies of Greece and Rome, but when the Duke
died, his town sort fell asleep in the passage of time. The town
constructed
throughout the mid-1500's remains as almost a snapshot of it’s
one great moment in time, with monuments to a Duke's lifestyle, his
Ducal Palace the Piazza Ducale, his personal "home theater" but
in grand Roman revival style - the Teatro Olimpico, built by Vincenzo
Scamozzi a student of
renowned
Italian
architect, Palladio.The Duke's personal art gallery, "The Galleria” forms one side of the town’s central square. Most galleries in architecture lead from one building or room to another, the Duke Gonzaga’s doesn’t actually lead to anywhere. Its long columned corridor held his collection of antique marble statues, antiquities and hunting trophies gained from his world travels. The art works are no longer in the galleria, long since moved to display in the Ducal Palace in Mantua, but the corridor itself is still beautiful adorned by frescoes on the walls by Giovanni and Alessandro Alberti, with paneled ceiling with coat of arms decoration.
The
Garden Palace was the Duke’s summer place, to invite guests
to his personal little getaway town, but only a short walk from his
main palace. Two floors long with a series of rooms finished in 1587.
The
outside is rather plain, once painted in mock marble, but inside, a
series of rooms decorated by the Cremona artist Bernardino Campi celebrate
Vespasiano’s
love of literature and ancient myth. The Room of Caesars is dedicated
to the 
Roman Emperors and Goddess Minerva, the Room of Philemon and
Baucus, where along with landscapes
and frescos of the Roman Circus are 14 lunettes
representing the mythological tale from Ovid’s
Metamorphoses, followed by the Room of Myths and the small
Chamber of Graces with grotesques by Giovani Bicesi “Il Fornarino”.
Some of the artwork and decorative pieces from here and the main palace
were also taken long ago to Mantua, but what remains is a fascinating
look into the country life of a once powerful and idiosyncratic Italian
duke. Sabbioneta is also known for its Jewish Ghetto 
and Synagogue
a remnant of a lively Jewish community in the 19th Century, pretty
much vanished
in the prewar 1930's. There are three beautiful churches in Sabbioneta
and the collection of religious art at the Museo di Arte Sacra Museum
of Holy
Art is quite impressive as is the Mausoleum at the Church of The Incarnation
of the Blessed Virgin. So
enamored
of
Roman
Emperors,
the Duke's statue
in
his magnificent
mausoleum
of
multi-varieties
of
precious
marble
is
actually a combination of his own face on a body copying a likeness
of Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
There
are only three albergo hotels in Sabbioneta and one bed & breakfast.
The 3 star "Al Duca" is around the corner from the Duke's Galleria
while a 1 star upstairs Albergo "Guilia Gonzaga" is across
the street. Staying in nearby Casalmaggiore might be an option or Parma,
or just a stop off on the road of your travels. Nightlife in Sabbioneta
is pretty
much a bar where locals hang out and the town's antique shop across from
the central square feels like a lonely journey into the lost past. You
might find a bargain or two, but the architectural pieces will probably
be too big for a suitcase. © Bargain
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