San Lorenzo's Rotonda

This is a beautiful and mysterious place. Nestled between monuments dating to later periods, next to the Palazzo della Ragione and Piazza Erbe, a few metres from St Andrew’s Cathedral, this building, its shape evoking the The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, was probably completed in the last decades of the 11th century. A period in which Mantua and a large part of Northern and Central Italy was was ruled by Canossa dynasty, and in particular by Matilda of Tuscany, who profoundly humiliated the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Many hypotheses have been formulated concerning the destination of the Rotonda, some of which speak of a connection with the government building of the Canossa. Some have even claimed that the original project dates to the years Matilda’s mother lived, Beatrice of Lorraine, who died in 1076. Others have spoken of a link between this circular shaped and ancestral church and the cult of the Sacred Relic of Christ, that is the blood of our Saviour, brought to Mantua by Longinus, the soldier who pierced the side of Jesus hanging on the cross.