Palazzo Te: Giulio Romano's Masterwork in Mantua

A lavish Renaissance pleasure palace for rest and entertainment, decorated with spectacular frescoes of themes from ancient myth

The palace’s interiors are replete with frescoes depicting imaginative scenes and trompe l’oeil fantasies of gods and heroes, fictive marble statues, and portraits of the Duke’s favorite thoroughbreds. From the erotic scenes of the Sala di Psiche to the famous Sala di Giganti, based on the mythological defeat of the Titans by the gods of Olympus, the High Renaissance ideal of classical harmony and balance is overtaken by breathtaking illusionist techniques and images of giants, falling masonry, and the thunderbolts from the gods.