Month: May 2023
Mantova: Castello San Giorgio and Camera degli Sposi
Mantova: San Sebastiano

From the Palazzo Te it was just a short walk to the church of San Sebastiano. The church was designed by the famous Renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472). Its construction started around 1460 and it was completed by Luca Fancelli (ca. 1430-1502) well after the death of the original…
Mantova: The Duomo

The cathedral of Mantova is dedicated to Saint Peter the Apostle. In Italian the building is therefore known as the cattedrale di San Pietro. It is a peculiar rather than a beautiful building, a remarkable mixture of styles, combining a Romanesque bell-tower, a Gothic flank, a sixteenth-century Renaissance interior with…
Mantova: Sant’Andrea
Mantova: San Lorenzo
Mantova: Piazza Virgiliana

“Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc Parthenope; cecini pascua, rura, duces.” (“Mantua bore me, Calabria took me away again, Naples now holds me; I sang about pastures, fields, leaders”) These famous words, which according to tradition are from the epitaph of the poet Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 BCE) and…
Cividale del Friuli: Museo Cristiano

Het museum naast de Duomo van Cividale del Friuli is niet bepaald groot te noemen: het bestaat uit slechts vier zalen. Toch zou ik niemand willen aanraden het museum maar over te slaan. Het bezit namelijk prachtig Longobardisch beeldhouwwerk uit de achtste eeuw en schilderijen uit de zestiende eeuw van…
Cividale del Friuli: De Duomo
Diocletianus: The Years 304-305
Diocletianus: The Years 301-303
Diocletianus: The Years 296-300

In the period discussed here, the Crisis of the Third Century seemed like a thing of the distant past. The Tetrarchy functioned well and the four emperors of the Roman Empire won important victories on all fronts. Rebellions were crushed, rebel leaders were eliminated, and after a few initial setbacks…
Diocletianus: The Years 293-295

In the third century the vast Roman Empire had at least 50 million inhabitants. Since Caracalla’s Constitutio Antoniniana of 212 almost all of these possessed Roman citizenship, provided that they were freeborn. The large majority of the people lived in the country or in one of the many hundreds of…