Description
The Palazzo della Ragione is Mantua's old town hall, on the eastern side of Piazza delle Erbe: a long medieval building with a 15th-century arcade on the ground floor and, above, a great 13th-century hall that houses the Sonnabend Collection Mantova, a collection of modern art.
The hall is a single room of imposing proportions. On the end walls, traces of medieval frescoes survive: an Assault on a Fortress and figures of Prophets signed by Grisopolo da Parma, a 13th-century painter.
On the ground floor runs the arcade facing the square, added in the 15th century, with shops and cafés. Next to it rises Luca Fancelli's Torre dell'Orologio, which gives access to the palace through the door at its base.
The palace was built around 1250 next to the Rotonda di San Lorenzo, on the remains of a hospice the Canossa family had opened for pilgrims who came to venerate the Blood of Christ. Documents of the time call it the Palatium Novum, the commune's new palace: it was indeed the seat of the city's institutions, before becoming a covered market.
The hall, in fact, hosted the city assemblies and, when it rained, the square's market too. Under the Gonzagas it was joined to the nearby Palazzo del Podestà, and in the 15th century it became the law courts and the notaries' archive.
Between the late 17th and early 18th centuries the architect Doricilio Moscatelli, known as "Battaglia", closed the old triple-arched windows and opened new ones, completely changing the building's appearance.
In 1942 the Mantuan architect Aldo Andreani restored its original façade and reorganised the interior, removing the Baroque additions. The 2012 earthquake damaged it, along with other monuments on the square.
The hall's modern art collection, opened on 29 November 2025, comes from the collection of the gallerist Ileana Sonnabend, who lived from 1914 to 2007. So a palace born for the commune's assemblies has once again become a place open to all.
The hall is a single room of imposing proportions. On the end walls, traces of medieval frescoes survive: an Assault on a Fortress and figures of Prophets signed by Grisopolo da Parma, a 13th-century painter.
On the ground floor runs the arcade facing the square, added in the 15th century, with shops and cafés. Next to it rises Luca Fancelli's Torre dell'Orologio, which gives access to the palace through the door at its base.
The palace was built around 1250 next to the Rotonda di San Lorenzo, on the remains of a hospice the Canossa family had opened for pilgrims who came to venerate the Blood of Christ. Documents of the time call it the Palatium Novum, the commune's new palace: it was indeed the seat of the city's institutions, before becoming a covered market.
The hall, in fact, hosted the city assemblies and, when it rained, the square's market too. Under the Gonzagas it was joined to the nearby Palazzo del Podestà, and in the 15th century it became the law courts and the notaries' archive.
Between the late 17th and early 18th centuries the architect Doricilio Moscatelli, known as "Battaglia", closed the old triple-arched windows and opened new ones, completely changing the building's appearance.
In 1942 the Mantuan architect Aldo Andreani restored its original façade and reorganised the interior, removing the Baroque additions. The 2012 earthquake damaged it, along with other monuments on the square.
The hall's modern art collection, opened on 29 November 2025, comes from the collection of the gallerist Ileana Sonnabend, who lived from 1914 to 2007. So a palace born for the commune's assemblies has once again become a place open to all.