Four Italian cities: A convenient cultural itinerary full of delight

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As cold grips in the northern hemisphere, David Ecclestone distracts us with a journey through sunny Italy

Here are four cities in the Italian north east,  three of them in the Emilia-Romagna and one just a little north, but all in an easy day’s drive of each other and all offering visual delights and a slightly different view of Italian history: Bologna, Mantua, Ferrara and Ravenna. Patronage is the key to the narrative: patronage by wealthy families in Ferrara, Mantua and Bologna.  In Ravenna the story is different as we shall see.

Bologna’s big asset on an insupportably hot day is the system of porticoes.  These extensive arcaded walkways allow you to go for miles in the welcome shade and they are very decoratively painted in the dark terracotta that defines the city.  How sad that the erstwhile visual unity provided by the architecture and the colour has been destroyed in many areas by the depressing ubiquity of graffiti.  For the second half of the 15th century the Bentivoglio family exercised power and patronage, greatly enriching the city’s treasure.  Another period of prosperity followed when Bologna was annexed to the Papal States.  But the city’s distinctive landmark, the two towers, one of which leans at a disorientating angle, predates both of these periods of patronage.  Today it remains a very useful way of locating yourself from any point in the city.

In Mantua, the source of Renaissance patronage was the Gonzaga family.  The power and influence of the Gonzagas stretched back much further and their impact on the city in visual terms is much more evident: witness the Palazzo Ducale.  The residence of the Gonzagas, the Palazzo is a vast and prestigious complex of apartments, corridors and courtyards built between the 14th and 17th centuries and the home of the famous cycle of frescoes by Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) n the Camera degli Sposi.  The palace borders and dominates the lovely and extensive central square with the Cathedral of Saint Peter’s at the far end, at right angles to the palace buildings.  In summer across the square from the Palazzo, a plantation of umbrellas, screening the tables from the sun beckons, and you may be button-holed by the boss, who will tell you in fluent if slightly fractured English why you should sit down there for lunch.  Don’t be put off by the hard sell – the food and the service are good and the view takes a lot of beating.

Ferrara.  Have you ever felt sorry for the dragon?  Does St George come over as a bit of a brute sometimes?  Many people will know the National Gallery’s painting by Uccello.  The dragon looks too small and inoffensive and it has those roundels on the wings that make it look like an escapee from a Red Arrows show.  The version to strike fear is a painting by Cosmè Tura in the Museo della Cathedrale at Ferrara.  Here is a truly fearsome beast and a knight cast in the heroic mould.  St George is straining every sinew to deliver the locals from the fiery threat and save the maiden.  He is astride a horse that is rearing in awful fear away from the quarry.  This is a vast painting in a sombre palette with the hero’s expression one of intense concentration – the look of a surgeon rather than a cavalier.

This painting is on the organ shutter, which was originally in the cathedral and forms part of the collection of Renaissance masterpieces that survived the passing of the Este family from power in Ferrara at the end of the 16th century.  In the city itself it is very difficult to miss the influence of the House of Este: the massive Castello Estense is right in the middle of the town and, glowering from behind its moat, it dominates visually and psychologically.  The building is an overwhelming testament to the power of vast wealth to protect itself.  The earlier family residence was in what is now the City Hall, a graceful, modest building, renovated in the 18th century.  But in 1385, the populace showed signs of unrest and discontent with their rulers over such matters as taxes and flooding.  Niccolò II d’Este first threw the official responsible to the crowd to be torn to pieces and then decided to house the family in this impregnable new-build (actually an extension of an existing but much smaller fortification).  The scale, the lowering facades and the grim drawbridge leave little doubt about the size of the problem that the Marquis foresaw and the staggering extent of the resources that he was able to call upon to address it.

In the fourth city of this cultural round-up, Ravenna, it was the reunification of the Eastern and Western Churches in the 6th century that provided the impetus for a flowering of the mosaicist’s art, along with innovative church design, that resulted in the triumph of the basilica of San Vitale.  This eight-sided church produces an internal space of magic and wonder – light and shade alternating around the elusive shape of the polygonal columns that circumscribe the nave.  The mosaics placed there at the time of Theodoric (471–526) have the startling freshness of yesterday.

The importance of mosaics to Ravenna is beautifully brought home at TAMO – a museum devoted to mosaics, which is housed in the deconsecrated church of San Nicolò, an impressive space that has been imaginatively adapted using walkways, platforms, projectors and computers as well as large-scale physical reproductions of wall and floor mosaics.  There is an illuminating section on the evolution of the tesserae themselves from the use of chips of variously coloured rocks to the manufacture of the fragments from sheets of coloured glass and from gold and silver leaf sandwiched between sheets of clear glass.  Finally, the work of contemporary mosaicists is featured.  This is resourceful, imaginative and often emotionally charged.

These four towns provide diverse views of Italian culture and history, and a rich aesthetic experience that I can guarantee you will not soon forget.  And I haven’t even mentioned the food and wine...