48 Hours in Ferrara: Where Renaissance Italy Still Lives
Castello Estense rises at the heart of Ferrara's historic center.
Some Italian cities you visit for the landmarks. Others you visit because history is still how people get to work. Ferrara is the second kind.
An easy train journey from Bologna, Ferrara sits in Emilia-Romagna, its historic center shaped by the Este court, whose patronage helped make the city a major center of Renaissance art, literature, and humanism. What makes Ferrara unusual is how little distance there is between then and now. Medieval streets carry bicycle traffic, not tour groups. Renaissance planning still dictates how the city moves. The Este court's buildings sit inside ordinary blocks, not behind velvet rope.
Start at Castello Estense
At the center of Ferrara, Castello Estense is the obvious place to begin. The moat, towers, courtyards, and ceremonial rooms belonged to the Este court, the ruling dynasty whose influence shaped Ferrara for centuries.
Castello Estense reflected in its moat, where Ferrara's Renaissance history remains part of the cityscape.
The castle is also a useful introduction to the city's history because the Este story is not simply one of architecture and patronage. Power here was negotiated through marriage, diplomacy, religion, and culture.
Two Lucrezias offer a glimpse of that more complicated history. Lucrezia Borgia arrived in Ferrara in 1502 as the bride of Alfonso I d'Este and became part of one of Renaissance Italy's most sophisticated courts. More than half a century later, Lucrezia de' Medici married Alfonso II d'Este at fifteen. Her brief, unhappy marriage became the historical foundation for Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait.
After the castle, resist the temptation to rush immediately to the next sight. Ferrara rewards a slower pace.
Walk the Renaissance City
From Castello Estense, head into the older streets around Via delle Volte. The narrow medieval street, with its brick arches and covered passages, offers a glimpse of Ferrara's commercial past, when goods moved between the river Po and the warehouses lining the lane—long before anyone thought of it as a backdrop.
In Ferrara, the bicycle isn't a tourist accessory. It's how the city moves.
Widen out from there, and the city's other identity comes into view. Ferrara's historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, recognized for a Renaissance urban plan largely credited to the architect Biagio Rossetti, who extended the medieval city according to principles of perspective and proportion rather than letting it grow at random. You don't need to know that to feel it—it's in the long, deliberate sightlines and the way doorways line up down a block—but it explains why the city reads as designed rather than accumulated.
Let the walk carry you toward Piazza Trento e Trieste by late afternoon. This is Ferrara at its least staged: students on bicycles, people running errands, outdoor tables filling up, the cathedral watching over it all without making a production of it.
Eat As the Este Court Did
Ferrara's kitchen still carries the court's fingerprints. Cappellacci di zucca—pasta filled with roasted pumpkin, usually dressed simply in butter and sage—is the city's signature primo, and worth having at least once during any visit.
Salama da sugo with mashed potato, one of Ferrara's most distinctive traditional dishes.
For something heartier, order salama da sugo, a rich, spiced pork specialty with roots at the Este table, traditionally spooned over mashed potato so the cream can absorb its intensity. It's not a quick dish—the original cure takes weeks—which is part of why eating it here, made by someone who didn't rush it, means something.
Save room, if you can, for pampapato: a dense, spiced chocolate cake that makes a fitting final course on either night.
Day Two: Beneath the Renaissance City
Ferrara's second identity sits just beneath its Renaissance surface. Palazzo dei Diamanti, named for the diamond-cut stone studding its facade, is worth a visit for the building alone. From there, walk into what was once the Jewish quarter, among Italy's oldest.
MEIS, the National Museum of Italian Judaism and the Shoah, is housed in a former prison and gives that history room to breathe rather than compressing it into a plaque. Give it a full hour, more if the current exhibition draws you in.
In the afternoon, rent a bicycle. Ferrara's center is largely closed to cars and was never built with them in mind, so a bike is less a novelty than the correct way to see the Renaissance walls that still ring the city—and the fastest way to reach the quieter neighborhoods just beyond them.
Ferrara Deserves the Detour
Beyond the historic center, Ferrara opens into quieter paths and slower rhythms.
Ferrara doesn't compete with Florence or Venice on scale, and it isn't trying to. Its case is different: the Este court and Renaissance humanism, Jewish history and Italian history, five-hundred-year-old streets and an ordinary Tuesday, all still occupying the same space without one crowding out the other. Read Giorgio Bassani's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis before you go, or after—either way, the city will feel different.
Getting there: Direct trains connect Ferrara to Bologna (about 30 minutes) and Venice (1.5–2 hours), making it an easy day trip or an overnight add-on to either.
Best time to visit: Spring or early fall, for walking and cycling weather that won't fight you.
Further Reading: On History That's Still Being Lived In
These pieces follow the same idea in different forms—a Renaissance court that never quite became a museum, and the meal, the marriage, and the cities still carrying that history forward.
→ The Marriage Portrait—September Book Pick and Review: Maggie O'Farrell imagines the interior life of Lucrezia de' Medici, married into the same Este court that still stands at Ferrara's center.
→ What to Eat While Reading The Marriage Portrait: One dish for the marriage that unfolded inside this castle.
→ 48 Hours in Bergamo: Another Italian hill town where medieval streets and an unhurried pace haven't given way to the crowds—Ferrara's quieter cousin, an hour further north.