Mantua + Sabbioneta = Two Day Field Trip for Samuel

Hey! It's Samuel! I'm guest posting again. Last time I guest posted I wrote about our trip as a family to Prague. Now I'm posting about my class trip earlier in April to two cities in the south-eastern part of the region of Lombardy: Mantua and Sabbioneta. My teacher wanted to take us there because that's close to where Virgil (a Roman poet) was born and we happened to be finishing off the Aeneid.

The trip lasted two days, Thursday thru Friday. I departed at around 7:30 a.m. and set off on the four hour ride to Sabbioneta. It wasn't long until we got to the first toll: that's when the cops stopped us. They were checking that the bus didn't carry any immigrants and to see if the driver got all of his speeding tickets (basically). We, then, stopped at a gas station to eat a snack so then we can hit the road (Jack!).

We arrived to Sabbioneta at around 11:00. Sabbioneta was a fortress, built like an irregular hexagon, for the Gonzaga dynasty. The tips of the hexagon are filled with compact dirt to cushion the impact of flying cannon balls and it was surrounded by a moat. By the looks of it to me, it doesn't seem to have been assaulted before. Then we went to find our tour guide that would lead us through the city.

The gate to Sabbioneta

The square outside the Gonzaga palace

Our first stop was the theater: the first modern theatre since the Hellenistic period. The inside looked like a very small greco-roman theater: the stage looked like a common street in the city and it was built slanted at an angle so you could see the perspective of the street with limited space. There are four rows of seats: two at the bottom for the knights and two at the top for the higher nobility. They are built following the greco-roman style of theater and the walls are covered with frescoes that show Rome on the left and Athens on the right.

The Sabbioneta theater

The reconstructed stage

The painting that illustrates Rome, the Athens one is almost completely gone

The seats for the higher nobility

The next stop was at a museum of the Gonzaga, which held many replicas of equestrian statues of Vespasian Gonzaga, the founder of the fortress, and his ancestors. Vespasian was part of an order of knights called the "Toson d'Oro". These knights always wore a necklace with a golden ram on it, so if you look closely at Vespasian's statue then you will see that necklace. Another interesting fact: the Gonzaga dynasty was the ugliest dynasty that ever ruled in Italy.

A chalk replica of the statue on top of the tombstone of Vespasian Gonzaga that never held his body 

The equestrian statue replica of Vespasian Gonzaga with his necklace if you look closely

The next stop was a Jewish synagogue. You had to wear a kippah to enter. No one saw that sign and I was the only one that saw it. But I couldn't find a kippah, so when we entered the place of worship I didn't know what else to do other than cover my head with my hand to respect it.

Inside the synagogue

The next stop was the Gonzaga palace. It wasn't as interesting as everything else, but it was still enjoyable.

The gallery of the Gonzaga palace, the third longest in Europe

After that the tour was done and we sat down and ate lunch in the square. Then we left for Mantua.
When we got there, you would expect me to settle down at the hotel, au contraire: we went on a boat tour on the river that runs through Mantua: Mincio. It was really nice, but you should also know that I was on the most dangerous river in Italy inhabited by crocodiles and 180 pound catfish. If I were reading this post for the first time I would be like: "AND THIS IS LEGAL!?". Yep, it is, and it's completely safe; however I'm not saying that you should throw your chihuahua into the water: it's very likely that it will be eaten by unsuspecting catfish. The river is also home to many herons. If you ever want to go there, July is the best time to go because the time you arrive it will be covered in lotuses. With all of these animals around you're probably asking: how did they all get there? Well for starters, one Gonzaga king decided to alter Mincio's course and make four lakes around his city, turning it into an island: Superiore, Inferiore, di Mezzo and Paiolo. However when the swamp came along, they were forced to dry out Paiolo and now it's a peninsula.

Swans

Grey heron

A rare red heron. My teacher said we were lucky to see one.

I wasn't joking about the catfish! Here's a dead one floating by.

After the boat tour we went to settle in the hotel. Be surprised if you will, but settling in the hotel was trickier business than I thought. When I got my room key the guy said it was on the first floor. I wasn't convinced when I started looking because the rooms aren't organised by order of the room numbers. The hotel was shaped like a halo and it had three floors, so getting lost is easy when you have a good chance of making a circle on the same floor and not even know it. I felt like Frodo and Sam when they're close to Mordor before they meet Gollum in the Two Towers and they get lost: everything looked so familiar looking for my room until I realised I was walking around in circles. I discovered that my room was on the second floor.

Hotel ABC (yes, that's its name)

After I settled in I ate dinner with my class and we set off for a midnight stroll (but I don't mean that it was literally midnight) in the city. When we came back I went straight to the shower and to bed.

The cathedral right next to the astronomical clock on our midnight stroll.

I was forced to wake up early in the morning for breakfast. I wanted to wake up at 7:00 and breakfast was at 7:30. However my teacher wanted everyone to wake up at 6:30. That stunk, big time.
Then we went off to a tour around Mantua (which I found a lot more interesting than Sabbioneta by the way). This was my favorite part of the trip.

The astronomical clock. It stopped ticking centuries ago and the mechanism is so complex that not even a genius can fix it! No one knows how to fix it because there are no more blueprints left of it.

The Duke Palace 

Outdoor prison cage 

Gonzaga dynasty

One of the hundreds of hallways in the Duke Palace

St. George's Castle

After we got past the immense amount of touring, we went to the Palace Te. Now there's a common misconception about it's name origin. Lots of people think that it comes from the Italian word for tea: tè. But this was built before tea was discovered, so the name came from the local vulgar term for "fun": in fact it was built for this very purpose. The most interesting room of this palace is the Room of the Giants (Camera dei Giganti) which is a room that is completely covered in one big fresco that shows the rebellion of the giants against Zeus who makes the ceiling of his temple crush them. It was built in such a way that when the spectator gasped at these images, the echoing of his/her very voice will scare him/her even more.

I did not zoom in on any of these!

After the tour we went to the bus and then home. It was a four hour trip and we departed at five o'clock. Then we stopped at a gas station to get snacks. I didn't eat any dinner and I could only afford a large bag of M&M's. While on the bus it was late and I was eating them. As some of you might know I get hyper when I eat lots sugar really late and surrounded by people. And the rest of the ride back I was like that. I hope never to do something of the sort again (although time can only tell and I might just break this vow at SHARE). I got back at 9:00 right when my whole family was waiting to receive me again in the house with a warm welcome, while watching Star Wars bonus features in the mean time. It was an awesome trip! I can't wait to go to France for a week next year with the exchange program!