Streaming television during this time of quarantine, instead of traveling, did lead me to revisit too few days too many years ago in Mantua (Mantova).
The Trial (Il Proceso) is a series set around a murder trial in Mantua on Netflix. A procedural with a series of satisfying plot twists (and a little too convenient ending to conclude in eight episodes), the series does evoke the place with the underlying murder set in the a Renaissance Palazzo Te.
Highly recommended, if only because it underscores the very different way these disputes are handled in a different legal system – without vouching for the accuracy of the details!
But Palazzo Te is only one commission of the Renaissance architect who left his stamp in Mantua. Others in include parts of the Ducal Palace and the Fish Market .

Mantua is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is surrounded on three sides by lakes built as a defensive moat almost a thousand years ago. But the Ducal Palace, filled with an artistic legacy commissioned by the Gonzaga’s over three hundred years is its heart. (Even with Napoleon and the Hapsburgs removing the moveable parts of that legacy which can now be seen in Madrid, Paris and Vienna…and even the Getty Museum in Los Angeles).



Medieval and a Renaissance sites abound, including the Duomo opposite the Ducal Palace.


And the Renaissance Clock in the Piazza delle Erbe.

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