Places to visit in Ferrara

The City of Ferrara offers a great choice of places to visit in the historic center and in the province, of great historical and artistic value, as well as of natural relevance. If you wanted to get some tips for places to visit in Ferrara, come visit us at Ferrara Store: you will meet a friendly staff and at your disposal for tourist tips, you will find our bikes, useful for visiting Ferrara, and you can get the best typical products of the Province of Ferrara.

But what to visit in Ferrara? The places to visit in Ferrara are really a lot: in fact, this city offers you the opportunity to combine your visit for tourism with food and wine tastings; at the same time you can visit the most important places and monuments of Ferrara and taste many typical products of this city.

The top ten places to visit in Ferrara are:

• The Estense Castle: it is the first thing you see in Ferrara. Symbol for centuries of the military and political power of the City, has now become a museum in which you can find, between the basement and the main floor, a series of richly decorated rooms, a symbol of the wealth of the Este family who had it built in 1385 and who lived within its walls up to 1597;

• The Diamond Palace: it was built at the turn of the fifteenth century at the behest of Ercole I d'Este, during the urban renewal of the city designed by Rossetti. Famous for its external ashlar made of pyramid blocks of marble, it is one of the places to visit in Ferrara that you cannot miss;

• The Walls of Ferrara: the city walls, exceptionally well preserved, built over many centuries between the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are one of the most special places to visit in Ferrara, for you can opt for a bike tour, joining the historic with the landscape visit;

• Palace of Ludovico il Moro: sixteenth-century building erected, according to legend, by will of Lodovico il Moro, but more probably founded by the Sforza deputy in Ferrara. Inside you will find the National Archaeological Museum, which hosts artifacts from the ancient Etruscan city of Spina, located near the present city of Comacchio;

• Palazzo Massari: massive sixteenth-century two-storeys building, which ranks among the most important places to see in Ferrara, because inside there are three important museums: the Giovanni Boldini Museum, the Museum of the nineteenth century and the Filippo de Pisis Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art;

• Cathedral of St. George Martyr: it is the episcopal seat of the city and the most famous religious building in Ferrara. Dating from the beginning of the founding of the city and consecrated in 1135, the Cathedral has undergone continuous changes in the work in progress compared to the original project; it is certainly one of the most important places to visit in Ferrara for its baroque interiors, due to the restoration of the seventeenth century, after the loss of the original decorations because of a fire;

• Monastery of St. Anthony in Polesine: it is a monastic complex built at the behest of the Augustinians in 1297, and then given to the Benedictine nuns. His name does not derive from the Polesine area, but by the fact that its old location was in an area surrounded by water. The monastery is certainly one of the places to visit in Ferrara, because inside the church there are three chapels, two with frescoes by Giotto school, representing the stories of Jesus' childhood, the life of the Virgin and the stories of the Passion, and the third with the Annunciation by Domenico Panetti;

• Schifanoia Palace: the building, commissioned by Alberto d'Este and built from 1385, ranks as one of the most important places to visit in Ferrara, as it also hosts several cycles of frescoes, including the outstanding Hall of the Months, where you can see frescoes depicting personifications of the months of the year, which corresponds to a zodiac sign, designed by the best ferraresi artists of the time;

• Casa Romei: it was built in the fifteenth century, an interesting mixture of medieval and Renaissance styles, which is why it deserves to be mentioned among the main places to see in Ferrara. Inside, the rooms are decorated with gothic elements and you can also see the famous frescoes depicting the Sibyls;

• Monumental Cemetery of Certosa: it was a Carthusian monastery built in 1492 at the behest of Borso d'Este; after the Napoleonic invasion, it has become the city cemetery: inside there are the graves of famous people like Borso d'Este and Filippo de Pisis.

We invite you to visit us in Ferrara Store: you will find a welcoming environment in which you can choose with care between the various typical foods of Ferrara and where you can find the salama da sugo, the pumpkin cappellacci, the garlic of Voghiera, the pampapato, the wine of the Eliceo forest, the coppia ferrarese and the pumpkin flatbread. If you could not come and visit us in person, you can buy our products in our online shop by clicking here.