Scaravelli:Ristorante offers the best specialties of Mantuan cuisine prepared according to tradition, an excellent pizza and dessert of its own production in the fabulous setting of Piazza delle Erbe, the most evocative of Mantua's historic center.
Restaurant
Piazza delle Erbe
Piazza delle Erbe (or simply Piazza Erbe) is one of the main squares in Mantua.
Born in the communal age as a forum for commercial activities, markets and artisan shops, it was subsequently divided in two by the Palazzo del Podestà and transformed into the administrative heart of the Municipality.
On the eastern side of the part destined to become Piazza delle Erbe, the Palazzo della Ragione was built, alongside the already existing Rotonda di San Lorenzo from the Romanesque period. Under the dominion first of the Bonacolsi and then of the Gonzagas, the administrative and political power center moved to the current Piazza Sordello and the medieval buildings of Piazza Erbe underwent, over the centuries, rearrangements and renovations. The sequence of houses that housed the city merchants was exquisitely embellished with late Gothic and Renaissance porticoes. To characterize the square as Renaissance was Luca Fancelli, the Florentine architect who intervened on the Palazzo del Podestà, rebuilt the arcades in front of the Palazzo della Ragione and designed the Clock Tower.
Clock Tower
The Clock Tower is a Renaissance construction that rises between the Palazzo della Ragione and the Rotonda di San Lorenzo. The tower, with a square plan, was built between 1472 and 1473 by the Florentine architect Luca Fancelli. The door on the ground floor leads to the Palazzo della Ragione.
At the end of 1473 the astronomical clock was placed on the tower, the work of the Mantuan mathematician Bartolomeo Manfredi which indicated ordinary hours, astrologers and planets and which detected the path of the sun through the signs of the Zodiac and the phases of the moon. In the highest part of the tower there is a medium-sized bell that strikes the hours.
The Clock Tower now houses the Museum of Time, in which the ancient clock mechanisms are exhibited. From its top it is also possible to have an overview of Mantua and the lakes surrounding the city.
