Mantua

Mantua ( MAN-tew-ə; Italian: Mantova [ˈmantova] ; Lombard and Latin: Mantua) is a city and comune (municipality) in the region of Lombardy in northern Italy and capital of the eponymous province. It has 50,215 inhabitants. Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes, created during the 12th century as the city's defence system. These lakes receive water from the Mincio river, a tributary of the Po river, which descends from Lake Garda. The three lakes are called Lago Superiore, Lago di Mezzo, and Lago Inferiore ("Upper", "Middle", and "Lower" Lakes, respectively). A fourth lake, Lake Pajolo, which once served as a defensive water ring around the city, dried up at the end of the 18th century. The area and its environs are important not only in naturalistic terms, but also anthropologically and historically; research has highlighted a number of human settlements scattered between Barche di Solferino and Bande di Cavriana, Castellaro, and Isolone del Mincio. These dated, without interruption, from Neolithic times (5th–4th millennium BC) to the Bronze Age (2nd–1st millennium BC) and the Gallic phases (2nd–1st centuries BC), and ended with Roman residential settlements, which can be traced to the 3rd century AD. Under the House of Gonzaga in 1328- 1708, Mantua became one of the main artistic, cultural, and musical hubs of Northern Italy and Italy as a whole. It was one of the leading courts of Europe of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera; the city is also known for its architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces, and the medieval and Renaissance cityscape. It is the city where the composer Claudio Monteverdi premiered his opera L'Orfeo in 1607. It is the nearest town to the birthplace of the Roman classical poet Virgil, who is commemorated by a statue at the lakeside park "Piazza Virgiliana". In 2008, Mantua's centro storico (old town) and the nearby town of Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the "Italian Capital of Culture". and in 2017, it was named as the "European Capital of Gastronomy", included in the Eastern Lombardy District (together with the cities of Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona). In 2017, Legambiente ranked Mantua as the best Italian city for quality of life and environment.