Ducal Palace, Mantua. 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. The entrance of the palace is from Piazza Sordello, onto which the most ancient buildings, the Palazzo del Capitano and the Magna Domus, open. They formed the original nucleus of the so-called Corte Vecchia. The Palazzo del Capitano was built in the late 13th century by the Captain of the People Guido Buonacolsi. Initially built on two floors and separated from the Magna Domus by an alley, in the early 14th century it received a further floor and was united to the Magna Domus by a large facade with a portico. The additional floor consists of a huge hall, known as Hall of the Weapon Room of Hall of Diet, as it housed the Diet of Mantua in 1459. The monumental Scalone delle Duchesse, built in the 17th century and renovated in 1779 by Paolo Pozzo, leads to the Room of the Morone, named after the 1494 canvas of the Veronese painter Domenico Morone, portraying the Expulsion of the Bonacolsi in 1328. In the noble floor of the Captain's Palace is the First Room of Guastalla, with a fresco frieze with portraits of the Gonzaga family, which once extended to the successive room, the Room of Pisanello, from the artist who, from 1433, painted a series of frescoes depicting a Tournament and other scenes, which were left unfinished. His commissioner, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, is portrayed in the paintings. The frescoes were rediscovered and restored in the 1960s and 1970s. Main article: Studiolo of Isabella d'Este In 1519 Isabella d'Este moved her residence from the Castle of St. George to this older sector of the Gonzaga palace, in the so-called Widow Apartment. Isabella's apartment included two wings now divided by the entrance to the Cortile d'Onore. The Grotto Wing housed the wooden furnitures and the paintings from her famous studiolo, commissioned from 1496 to 1505 to Mantegna, Lorenzo Costa the Elder and Perugino, as well as new ones by Correggio. Another hall in the same wing is the Camera Granda or Scalcheria, frescoed in 1522 by the Mantuan artist Lorenzo Leonbruno. The apartment included further halls in the so-called Wing of Santa Croce, from the name of a church of the time of Matilda of Canossa, over whose remains were built rooms such as the Sala delle Imprese Isabelliane, the Sala Imperiale, Sala delle Calendule, Sala delle Targhe and Sala delle Imprese. Later Guglielmo X Gonzaga, in the 16th century, transformed the rooms of the Corte Vecchia creating the Refectory, facing the Hanging Garden, and the Sala dello Specchio, used for music. During the Habsburg rule in Mantua, the Refectory was refurbished, with the creation of the Sala dei Fiumi with paintings on the walls on which the rivers in the Mantuan territory are portrayed as giants. At the same time was created the Appartamento degli Arazzi, comprising four halls. Three of the latter have tapestries, executed in the Flanders on cartoons by Raphael, the same used for those in the Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Palace. They were bought at Brussels by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in the early 16th century to decorate what at the time was called the Green Apartment. After decorating the Palatine church of St. Barbara and a period in the Ducal Palace's stores, the Flemish tapestries were restored in 1799 and placed in the current location. A further restoration was carried on during the Napoleonic Wars in the Sala dello Zodiaco, also known as Napoleon I's Hall, after the French emperor slept there. Main article: Castello di San Giorgio, Mantua The Castle of St. George was built from 1395 and finished in 1406 under commission by Francesco I Gonzaga, designed by Bartolino da Novara, one of the most renowned military architects of the time.