Ferrara tourist information
Ferrara was an important medieval centre and one of the most opulent courts of the Renaissance. It is from there that its totally distinctive characteristics come: from the harmonious and inimitable sum of the tangle of shaded and irregular streets in its medieval quarters and the airy, luminous and geometric spaces of the Renaissance age. All this full of splendid palaces, houses, churches, squares, streets, gardens and works of art conserved in its innumerable museums that constitute one of its greatest attractions.
That's why Ferrara, as the city of the Renaissance, and its Po Delta has been entered by UNESCO in the World Heritage List.
Ferrara is a silent city, on a human scale, where you can stroll on foot or pedal slowly on a bicycle, at any hour of the day or night, without any fear, reliving the magic atmosphere of the past with each step.
Ferrara is one of the most important centres of artistic and cultural interest in Italy, thanks, in the first place, to the Diamond Palace, seat of prestigious exhibitions and to the top quality seasons of its Municipal Theatre.
Ferrara is the seat of historically reminiscent events of great appeal such as the Palio di San Giorgio, the oldest in Italy, an annual appointment that lets you relive unique and unrepeatable magic and emotions and the Ferrara Buskers Festival, in which street musicians from all over the world come together in the city in a very special musical happening.
The city's name, which is of unknown origin, appeared for the first time in a Longobard document dating from the year 753. The city was founded for military and commercial purposes at the fork of the two branches of the ancient Po, Volano and Primaro. In the Middle Ages, after a long series of vicissitudes that also brought it under the rule of the counts of Canossa, it became a self-governing free Commune and began to develop northward, away from the river. In the 13th century the conflicts between the Guelphs and Ghibellines favored the gradual rise to power of a single family, the Este, under whom Ferrara enjoyed its most glorious period.
In the 15th century it became the capital of one of the most important seigniories in Italy, especially with Nicolò III d'Este and his sons Leonello, a great humanist and patron of science, and Borso, who commissioned a great number of architectural and artistic works. The University, founded in 1391, reached its highest development in this period. The Dukes who followed, above all Ercole I, distinguished themselves for their interest in music and theatre, as well as for the magnificence of their court, comparable with the greatest courts in Europe.
The names of those who worked in or for Ferrara include the painters Pisanello, Jacopo and Giovanni Bellini, Cosmè Tura, Ercole de' Roberti, Tiziano, Garofalo, Dosso Dossi and Girolamo da Carpi, the architect and city-planner Biagio Rossetti, the musicians Josquin Desprez, Cipriano de Rore, Adriano Willaert, Jakob Obrecht, Francesco della Viola and Luzzasco Luzzaschi, the poets Boiardo, Guarini, Ariosto and Tasso, as well as important scientists like Leoniceno, Falloppio, Manardo, Brasavola, Paracelso and the great Copernicus, who earned one of his degrees here. Thanks to the presence of Renata di Francia, wife of Duke Ercole II, the city became one of the most important centers of the Protestant Reformation in Italy.
In 1598, as they had no legitimate heirs, the Este family was dispossessed of the city, which became a Legation of the Papal State. It remained beneath the temporal power of the Papacy until the unification of Italy, except for a brief period under Napoleon.
The urban framework of Ferrara is so innovative that it may be considered the "First Modern City of Europe". We can still see the southern medieval part and the northern Renaissance part, perfectly welded together by Rossetti between the 15th and 16th centuries. The city is extraordinarily well preserved and still encircled by walls; it is one of the major centers of art in Italy and, in relatively recent times, its cultural life has been further enriched by numerous international events, centered above all on music and the figurative arts.
by Official Site of Ferrara and its province
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