Experience the best of Mantua

Mantua sits on the plain of the River Mincio, which widens into three lakes along the north and east sides of the old city, and the water gives the place a quiet, misty mood. The Gonzaga family ruled for nearly four hundred years, and their Palazzo Ducale is a vast complex of courtyards that holds the Camera degli Sposi, a room frescoed by Andrea Mantegna with a painted oculus open to the sky. The old town and nearby Sabbioneta are listed by UNESCO.

The Palazzo Te, a pleasure villa decorated by Giulio Romano, includes the Room of the Giants, where painted figures seem to tumble across walls and ceiling. The Basilica of Sant'Andrea, by Leon Battista Alberti, stands beside Piazza delle Erbe, with its astronomical clock tower. Mantua is the setting of Verdi's Rigoletto, and the Roman poet Virgil was born in a village nearby. Sabbioneta, a small ideal town laid out in the 16th century, lies to the south-west.

Tortelli di zucca, pasta stuffed with pumpkin, crushed amaretti and mustard fruit, is the signature dish, followed by risotto alla pilota, stracotto d'asino, a slow-cooked donkey stew, and sbrisolona, a crumbly almond cake. Lambrusco is the local sparkling red. Winter brings fog, and in high summer lotus flowers cover parts of the upper lake.