Wonders in Mantova

The Palazzo del Te, originally built as a villa for a local prince to spend time with his mistress in, now holds some of the most beautiful and historically significant paintings in Italy. It is also home to some galleries of local or foreign works of art, this month being Al WeiWei, a notorious and technically on-the-lamb, anti-regime artist from China. Within the  is a room known as the Room of Giants, whose four walls, ceiling, and floor serve as an enormous canvas for a work from Giulio Romano featuring a battle between the gods of Olympus and the Titans who sought to overthrow them. This is one of my favorite paintings I’ve seen since I got to Italy, as the colors and the story told by the painting as some of the most powerful in the world. There was even a time where a fire was lit in the room so the crackling wood would imitate the crackling of Zeus’ thunderbolts, leading to a truly immersive experience.

Other than within Mantova, the group here has taken several trips outside the city. We’ve gone to Brescia, Bologna, Lake Garda, Verona, some of us have gone to Milan, and we’re even going to Venice in a few days! Of the places we’ve been, Lake Garda and Verona have been my favorites by far. Brescia is a nice city, but it was kind of small and we didn’t get to see much of it. But we did see several beautiful museums and ruins of Ancient Roman architecture there. Bologna was also beautiful, but it was very noticeably a college town and at times felt more like Boston than Italy. Lake Garda is the largest lake in all of Italy, and the only one my professor let me swim in, so that alone made the trip worthwhile! It also housed the remains of an Ancient Roman bath, which was incredible to walk through and see the view from the top of the hill. Verona was by far the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen, and it had so many different sections! There was the modern shopping section where I spent all of my money, the main square where the Arena was, the opposite square with all the local markets, the old theater district, the “Romeo and Juliet” district, and then there an enormous castle overlooking the whole city that I got to climb, granting me one of the most breathtaking views of my life. I can’t wait for the trip to Venice this weekend, I’m sure that’ll also be something worth blogging about.