Museo della Città - Palazzo San Sebastiano
The locals once called this place Palazzo delle bugandere — the laundresses' palace — because washerwomen strung their linen to dry over the ditch running beneath it. That detail tells you something about how thoroughly a building can fall from grace. In the early sixteenth century it was Francesco II Gonzaga's favourite private retreat, built between 1506 and 1508 and decorated with frescoes by Lorenzo Costa the Elder and Lorenzo Leonbruno, its north loggia given over to theatrical performances during Carnival.
Today it houses the city museum — renamed MACA, Mantova Collezioni Antiche, in 2023 — and sits on the straight axis between Palazzo Ducale and Palazzo Te, making it easy to fold into a longer walk through Mantua's Gonzaga geography.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to linger in the Camera del Crogiuolo and the Camera delle Frecce, the frescoed rooms that only opened to the public in 2003. The 17th-century copies of Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar — the originals left for Hampton Court long ago — reward a slow look once you know what you're comparing against.
The story behind Museo della Città - Palazzo San Sebastiano
Francesco II Gonzaga commissioned Palazzo San Sebastiano in 1506, working with architects Gerolamo Arcari and Bernardino Ghisolfo. The building was conceived partly to display Andrea Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar and partly as a leisure residence away from the formality of Palazzo Ducale. Francesco died here in 1519, and the palace passed through various uses and misfortunes over the following centuries.
The twentieth century was unkind: a section of the building and the adjacent Porta Pusterla were demolished to make way for automobile traffic, and the original gardens — once planted with hedge labyrinths, cedar trees, and orange trees reaching toward Casa del Mantegna — were reduced for residential construction in the 1920s and 1930s. A restoration campaign that began in 1995 brought the palazzo back; it reopened as Museo della Città on 19 March 2005.
Good to know
The ticket office closes at 5:30 PM; the museum itself at 6. Monday hours are shorter (1–6 PM). If you're visiting Palazzo Te the same day, the Mantova Sabbioneta Card at €20 covers both and pays for itself quickly. Budget roughly 40 minutes inside.
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What travellers say about Museo della Città - Palazzo San Sebastiano
It was a surprise, after having driven across france and italy visiting museums where i had to put google translator to the test, to find that every single object and panel has and english translation plus pretty useful QR codes which worked perfectly, plus the lightning and put on display of the collection was just remarkable, for thouse criticizing about the amount of material its not about always about that, its about the quality of thema and how much you learnt by vitising one of these places, and a learnt a lot. I'd like to congratulate the curator and personnel by such a great work.
Small museum with a mediocre exhibition; expected more.
Apart from few sculptures there is not much things to see, since the ticket to Palazzo Te is a combined ticket to visit this, we entered. Most of the frescos in the place is transferred to Palazzo Ducale. Will not take more than 30 minutes
Roman-greek mixed styled temple. Love the happy holy atmosphere of the place.
Ok
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