Mantua historical timeline

Virgil was born just outside Mantua in 70 BC, a fact the city has never let go of and which Dante used when he made Virgil introduce himself by his birthplace.

The city’s defining era began in 1328, when the Gonzaga family seized power. They held it until 1707 — as captains, then marquises, then dukes — and their strategy was cultural as much as military: they hired the best artists available and kept them. Mantegna was court painter for nearly fifty years. Alberti designed a basilica. Giulio Romano, trained in Raphael’s workshop, effectively became the city’s architect.

Isabella d’Este, who married into the family in 1490, assembled one of the most ambitious art collections of the period and is a substantial figure in her own right.

The end was abrupt. In 1627 the Gonzaga sold much of the collection to Charles I of England to cover debts, and in 1630 an imperial army sacked the city during the War of the Mantuan Succession, with plague following. Mantua passed to Austria, then briefly to France, and spent the next three centuries as a provincial town — which is precisely why so much of the Renaissance fabric survives unaltered.