Suzzara, Art Town

This is another important aspect in terms of the town’s cultural heritage, and its valuable influence is felt throughout the township. It is not possible to speak about these assets without also including the buildings where they are located. These structures are the product of a strong agricultural aristocracy and the transformation processes of a society that caused modifications in the economic-productive balance of the town and the surrounding territory and therefore also in its architecture, up to the most recent important buildings during the 20’s and 30’s in the center of town. There are traces and remains in the center of Suzzara of a city built "outside the walls". The other hand the territory has various structures build by predominately an agricultural nobility, that wanted or had to directly manage its possessions, or that needed a summer residence.

• Villa Capilupi in Suzzara /1567) – The Marquis Capilupi manor house, belonging to the Ippoliti family, clearly sixteenth-century design.
• Villa Cazzaniga Donesmondi in San Prospero di Suzzara – Manor house from the early sixteenth century, with important frescoes from the same period. Rebuilt at the beginning of the eighteeth century.
• Palazzo della Fame – sixteenth-century building in Riva di Suzzara
• Villa del Seminario . in Sailetto di Suzzara. Old Grassetti Court: Built in 1560 with splendid coffered ceilings and sixteenth-century frescoes with an annexed neogothic oratory (1903) by architect Spirito Maria Chiappetta.
• Sailetto Parish Church (1758) – on the interior: painting by Giuseppe Bazzani "Attila and Leo the Great", about 1750, a painting by Francesco Maria Ranieri, St. Sebastian, c. 1760.
• St: Nicholas Church at Tabellano: On the interior. An altarpiece from around the sixteenth century.
• St. Michael’s Church at Brusatasso (1759). On the interior. Paintings from the same period by local artists.
• St. Prospero’s Parish Church (1476)
• Parish Church at Riva (1742)

                                                            Monuments

The Tower

The crenellated tower is the only remaining part of the old castle from the fourteenth century under the rule of Ludovico Gonzaga I, third captain of Mantua. The tower was begun in February of 1372, and was almost certainly to the side of the door as was customary in the Mantuan defense system. It was originallu 25 meters high. Later, an additional storey was added to the top floor of the old tower. This was originally in wood and later (last half of the fifteenth century) in brick, up to the current 32 meters. The earliest picture of the finished tower is found in a painting from 1576 in the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Suzzara. The paiting is said to have been done to fulfill a vow after the plague, and is by Mantuan painter Teodoro Ghisi.

Church of the Immaculate Conception

The parish church was built between 1853 and 1854 and was dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, 1863. It was designed by Mantuan engineer Antonio Arrivabene in neoclassical style as was the custom in that period. Art critics have called the Church of the Immaculate Conception one of the most dignified works of the late Mantuan neo classicism in a provincial area.

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