page_title: Ducal Palace, Mantua
section_title: Domus Nova
hierarchical_section_title: Ducal Palace, Mantua / Domus Nova
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Scala Santa in Palazzo Ducale
context_page_description: The Palazzo Ducale di Mantova is a group of buildings in Mantua, Lombardy, northern Italy, built between the 14th and the 17th century mainly by the noble family of Gonzaga as their royal residence in the capital of their Duchy. The buildings are connected by corridors and galleries and are enriched by inner courts and wide gardens. The complex includes some 500 rooms and occupies an area of c. 34,000 m². Although most famous for Mantegna's frescos in the Camera degli Sposi, they have many other very significant architectural and painted elements.
  The Gonzaga family lived in the palace from 1328 to 1707, when the dynasty died out. Subsequently, the buildings saw a sharp decline, which was halted in the 20th century with a continuing process of restoration and the designation of the area as museum.
  In 1998, a hidden room was discovered by Palace scholars, led by musicologist Paula Bezzutti. The room is thought to have been used for performances of Monteverdi's music in the late 16th century.
context_section_description: The Domus Nova (Latin: "New House") was originally designed by Luca Fancelli in 1480–84. During the reign of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga (1562–1612) the edifice was renovated, creating the current Appartamento Ducale ("Ducal Apartment") designed in 1595 by Cremonese artist and architect Antonio Maria Viani.
  The Galleria Nuova ("New Corridor") was constructed in 1778 by Giuseppe Piermarini to connect the Guastalla apartment to the Ducal apartment. It houses several altarpieces from the early 16th century to the late 18th century by Francesco Borgani, Carlo Bononi, Spagnoletto and others. The gallery leads to the huge Sala degli Arcieri ("Room of the Archers"), the site of Duke Vincenzo's original apartment. Here can be found a celebrated altarpiece by Peter Paul Rubens (1605), formerly part of a triptych for the church of Santissima Trinità in Mantua, portraying the Gonzaga Family in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, as well as other paintings from now-suppressed churches and monasteries. This room opens to the Galleria degli Specchi ("Hall of Mirrors"), built as an open loggia under Vincenzo I, with frescoes by two pupils of Guido Reni and neoclassicist decoration dating from 1773–79. 
  Under his apartment in the Domus Nova, Vincenzo Gonzaga's son, Cardinal (later Duke) Ferdinand (1587–1626) had Viani design a series of ever-smaller rooms, long known as the Appartamento dei nani ("Dwarves' Apartments") and believed to have been built to house the celebrated court dwarves of Mantua. In 1979, however, Italian art historian Renato Berzaghi convincingly demonstrated that these tiny rooms are instead an exact reproduction of an ancient Roman original: the Scala Santa ("Holy Stairway") of St. John Lateran in Rome, and were intended for devotional purposes.
caption: Scala Santa.
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