Rovigo Things to Do

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Madonna del Soccorso, coloquially called La Rotonda, was built between 1594 and 1606 by Francesco Zamberlan di Bassano, a pupil of great Andrea Palladio. It has octagonal plan surrounded by a portico, very unusual for the sacral object. The walls of interior are wholly covered by the paintings by Francesco Maffei, Andrea Celesti, Pietro Vecchia and many others.
La Rotonda is one of the most attractive and most suggestive sights in a small town of Rovigo. Unfortunatelly it was under construction works during my visit.

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The complex of San Bartolomeo Apostolo, better known as San Bortolo, was founded in 1255 by order of Umiliati which completely disappeared after 1436. In 1474 the noble family of Roverella invited Olivetani monks to settle down in abandoned convent. Olivetani have demolished the old structure and commissioned famous Ferrarese architect Biagio Rossetti to design and built the new complex.
The church of the complex, dedicated to San Bartolomeo Apostolo, was built in the 15th century. It has simple facade and a single nave interior plan richly decorated in a Baroque style.
In the 16th century the monastery was enlarged and the second cloister was added. In 1810 by the Napoleonic decret, Olivetani were forced to leave Rovigo and the complex fall into decadence. In 1884 the monastery was donated to the city of Rovigo and transformed into an orphanage. Since 1979 it become Museo Civico della Civilta Polesine. Nowadays it houses Museo dei Grandi Fiumi.

Cardinal Bartolomeo di Roverella spearheadeded the construction of a majestic palace in the main square of Rovigo in 1474 to celebrate the great prestige of family Roverella. They suspended construction in 1477 after the death of the cardinal and resumed some years later with many changes in the project.
The architect's name is unknown, but young Biagio Rossetti may have been involved in the project, since he had close relations with the family. The building is very imposing and looks disproportionate when compared to the other palaces of Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II. The rooms inside the palace are embellished with frescoes and decorations.
Since the achievement of the renovation works in 2006, the palace has been housing temporary exhibitions (see next tip).
The paintings by local artists previously located at the Accademia dei Concordi were moved to Palazzo Roverella in October 2007.
The gallery is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9.30 to 12.30 and from 15.30 to 19.00. The ticket costs 5 euro; 4 euro for people over 65 years old, university students; 3 euro for groups of adults. Schools and people from 6 to 18 y.o. pay 1.50 euro.
The new seat should give more space to the art works and be more attractive for tourists.
However, when I visited the art gallery in January 2009, I was told that only a part of the paintings are exhibited when a temporary exhibition is ongoing. This proves that Palazzo Roverella isn't big enough for stable and temporary exhibitions.

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Current exhibition
"L'Ottocento elegante. L'arte in Italia nel segno di Fortuny. 1860-1890" ("The elegant 19th century. Italian art on the wake of Fortuny") was inaugurated on 29 January and will be open until 12 June 2011. More info here.

Future exhibition
None planned.

Past exhibitions
The exhibition that inaugurated Palazzo Roverella as a museum seat after its renovation was Le meraviglie della pittura tra Venezia e Ferrara ("Wonders of painting between Venezia and Ferrara") with paintings by Venetian and Ferrarese paintings from the 14th to the 16th century. It took place from January to June 2006 and was a sensational event since it attracted around 30,000 tourists to Rovigo, something my town had never seen before.
Since then, a great exhibition has been organized every year:
- 2007: more than 150 paintings by local painter Mario Cavaglieri;
- 2008: "La Belle Epoque - Art in Italy 1880-1915". About 35,000 people visited it, more than all the previous exhibitions;
- late 2008: "Pinocchio", with paintings from the famous novel by Carlo Collodi;
- 2009: "Déco - Art in Italy 1919-1939". It marked the record of over 40,000 visitors!
- late 2009: "Il gatto con gli stivali" (drawings inspired to Perrault's tale Puss in Boots), and "Scopri il Natale" (Discover Christmas);
- 2010: "Bortoloni, Piazzetta, Tiepolo. Il '700 veneto" (paintings by Venetian artists of the 18th century: Bortoloni, Piazzetta, Tiepolo). Quite an unsuccessful exhibition...
You can see some paintings from the previous exhibition here.

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The castle of Rovigo already existed in the 10th century, according to a bull by Pope John X and a deed of gift dating of 6th December 955, that ended up with the words actvm in castro Rhodigo feliciter.
The castle belonged to the bishops. In 1138, Bishop Florio Cattaneo had the town surrounded with new one-mile long walls. These walls had four gates flanked with towers and protected with banks and ditches, in Italian fosse. This explains the name of the Chiesa delle Fosse ("Church of the Ditches").
The castle looked like a fortress. The bishops lived on a rock close to the main tower (today "Torre Donà", see next tip).
Today little remains of the castle: the walls in ruins, the main tower, the cut tower (torre mozza) and two out of the six gates of the walls, i.e. San Bartolomeo and Sant'Agostino (see tips). Between the two gates, in via Ponte Roda, you can still see one of the towers built under Florio Cattaneo, today called Torre Pighin.
The whole area of the castle has been renovated at the same time as the Corso del Popolo (Rovigo's main street) and the result is quite good. Hopefully, it will be eventually possible to climb to the top of the higher tower, as it was when my dad was a child; this could contribute to the development of tourism in Rovigo.

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Tempio della Beata Vergine del Soccorso ("Temple of the Blessed Virgin of Assistance") is commonly known as la Rotonda, "the Rotunda", for its central plan (this means it can be inscribed into a circle). It is the best Baroque church and the most known monument of Rovigo.
The construction of the church was started by the Bishop of Adria, Lorenzo Laureti, on 13th October 1594, following a project by Francesco Zamberlan, disciple of Palladio's, and was achieved around 1615.
The building consists of two octogonal bodies set one into the other. The central octagon has three large windows at the top of every side; it is surrounded by a broad colonnade. In the peristyle you can see monuments and gravestones commemorating well-deserving citizens.
The inside has a majestic high altar (planned by Zamberlan, as well) and its walls are completely decorated with paintings, statues, friezes. The paintings were mainly made by local artists in the 17th and 18th century.
Close to the church, you see the wonderful bell-tower planned by Baldassarre Longhena in 1655, but finished only in 1773.

I did finally photograph the church outside and inside in 2009. More photos and tips about this wonder will come soon.

At the end of 2009, works started to completely rebuild piazza XX settembre, the square lying in front of the Rotonda, until recently used as a car park. The new square will be closed to cars. This means that it is difficult to get to the church and to photograph it from outside and explains why some of my photos look a bit crooked.

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Here are the most famous monuments of Rovigo: two medieval towers (Due Torri), once part of the castle, built before the 10th century. The higher one (50 metres) is named Torre Donà and the lower one Torre Grimani. They are located in the public gardens, in the Corso del Popolo (the main street of Rovigo), but the gardens are not as beautiful. Torre Donà is populated by pigeons and jackdaws, which made it not so attractive as it would be. There is a pigeon in the last picture, maybe you can see it if you enlarge the image.
My father told me that, when he was a child, people could climb to the top of Torre Donà. Hopefully, when the current works are finished, this will be possible again...

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It is sometimes hard for us to believe that our duomo is not a cathedral, but only a co-cathedral! In most Italian cities and towns that are capitals of a province, the duomo is the cathedral, i.e. the bishop's seat, but not in Rovigo. The bishop has had his seat in Adria, the second largest town in Polésine, since the 10th century. Anyway...
The duomo we see today lies where in the Middle Ages one could see the chiesa di Santo Stefano (Saint Stephen's church). This originary church was enlarged until 1696, when the construction of the present duomo started, based on a project by architect Girolamo Frigimelica from Padova. The church was completed only in the 18th century by Vincenzo Bellettato from Fratta Polésine (near Rovigo), but the dome was added at the end of that century and the façade left unachieved (it isn't so beautiful, is it?).
Inside you can see many art works, but I'll write a tip about the interior when I have visited it.