Ostiglia

Ostiglia lies on the Po southeast of Mantua. In Roman times Hostilia was a trading centre on the Via Claudia Augusta Padana and the birthplace of the writer Cornelius Nepos. After the Western Roman Empire fell, Ostrogoths, Byzantines and Lombards ruled the settlement in turn. Its position remained valuable in the Middle Ages, when Verona built a castle here in 1151.

The Scaliger lords held Ostiglia in the early fourteenth century, followed by the Visconti in 1381 and the Gonzaga of Mantua in 1391. Thereafter its fortunes were linked to Mantua, and the fortress gradually lost its strategic importance. In 1717 Emperor Charles VI ordered the castle demolished, ending the long history of a stronghold that had watched over this stretch of the Po.