Trascrizione
Palazzo Ducale hosts Mantua National Archaeological Museum. The collections span more than 6,500 years of history: from the oldest Neolithic farming communities to the Etruscan foundation of Mantua, from the Celtic invasions to the Roman conquest, up to the fall of the Empire and the arrival of the Lombards.
The tour begins on the first floor, dedicated to Prehistory and Protohistory, and continues on the ground floor with the Roman and Middle Ages.
This building was once a theatre: the Court Theatre of the Gonzaga family to be precise, commissioned by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in 1549 and built to a project by Giovanni Battista Bertani.
Destroyed by fire on several occasions, it was renovated at the beginning of the eighteenth century by Ferdinando Bibiena and rebuilt again in 1781 to a design by Giuseppe Piermarini, the architect of La Scala in Milan and Mantua’s Palazzo Accademico. At the end of the nineteenth century Mantua Municipal Authority converted the building into a silkworm market and then into a fruit and vegetable market.
The museum was set up here in the 1990s, after the property was transferred from the municipality to the state.