ITINERARIES IN MANTUA: THE PRINCE’S PATH

Itineraries in Mantua. Mantua is a pedestrian-friendly city, and you can easily reach everything you must see on foot, after a short walk, as I wrote in the post I dedicated to my journey to the 2016 Italian Capital of Culture.
There’s an itinerary that connects the two extremes of Mantua and which from the lakeside of the Lago di Mezzo (the Middle Lake) will bring you to the Te Palace, walking over the whole city and admiring its main palaces and monuments.

I walked along it and I suggest that you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to walk along the Prince’s path, because it will allow you to enter the very heart of Mantua.

Alongside the route you will find a little bit of the history of the city, too.

In recent years experts have found a road axis within the city connects Palazzo Ducale to the Palazzo Te. It is lined with important buildings commissioned by the lords of Mantua.
This “private Gonzaga route”, more simply, the “prince’s approach”, starts at the palace in piazza Sordello, reaches its splendid fulcrum at the basilica of Sant’Andrea, then continues across the Rio.
The itinerary passes buildings of great history and artistic note grouped within a few metres of each other inside the ancient walls, to end a stone’s throw away, in what was once the isle of the Te.
READ ALSO: Museums in Mantua.

The route taken in the opposite direction was often reserved for the most illustrious guests at the Mantuan count who, once they had arrived at the isle of the Te and had been welcomed at the villa, would cross the city triumphantly until, full of admiration, they reached the royal home of the Palazzo Ducale.

READ ALSO: Visit Mantua: useful information to visit the city and the Teresiana Library, the historical library in Mantua.