Unless one is crossing direct from Florence to Venice, by the Futa Pass and Bologna, Ferrara, as a stopping place on one’s Italian itinerary, is best reached from Ravenna. The road is flat, generally well-conditioned and covers a matter of seventy kilometres, mostly within sight of the sea or lagoons, more like Holland even than the country through which one has recently passed.
The Madonna of Chioggia
Of all the romantic Renaissance shrines of Italy none have a more potent attraction than Ferrara.
The Ferrara of the Middle Ages, like the Ferrara of to-day, is a paradox. No Italian State of similar power and magnificence ever exerted such disproportionate influence upon mediæval Italy; no city in United Italy in which are so combined the fascinating treasures of the past and modern political and industrial enterprise is so ignored by the casual traveller. Once the strongest post on the frontier of the Papal States, the seat of the House of Este, the abiding place of Torquato Tasso and Ludovico Ariosto, and the final marital home of Lucrezia Borgia, the golden period of its sixteenth century magnificence has sunk into an isolation unheeded by contingent development, and its inhabitants have shrunken to a bare third of their former numbers.
The ducal family of Este lived the life of the times to the limit of their powers. They, one and all, inherited a taste for crimes of various shades, just as they inherited the love of art. Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara, had no profound moral sense in spite of his finer instincts, and was so “liberal minded” that he shocked Bayard, the “chevalier sans peur et sans reproche,” into crossing himself “more than ten times” as an antidote, when he first came into the ducal presence.