Man­tua and Sab­bione­ta rep­re­sent two aspects of Renais­sance town plan­ning: Man­tua shows the renew­al and exten­sion of an exist­ing city, while some 30 km away, Sab­bione­ta rep­re­sents the imple­men­ta­tion of the period‘s the­o­ries about plan­ning the ide­al city. Typ­i­cal­ly, Mantua‘s lay­out is irreg­u­lar with reg­u­lar parts show­ing dif­fer­ent stages of its growth since the Roman peri­od and includes many his­tor­i­cal build­ings, among them an 11th cen­tu­ry rotun­da and a Baroque the­atre. Sab­bione­ta, cre­at­ed in the sec­ond half of the 16th cen­tu­ry under the rule of Ves­pasiano Gon­za­ga Colon­na, can be described as a sin­­gle-per­i­od city and has a right-angle grid lay­out. Both cities offer excep­tion­al tes­ti­monies to the urban, archi­tec­tur­al and artis­tic real­iza­tions of the Renais­sance, linked through the visions and actions of the rul­ing Gon­za­ga fam­i­ly. The two towns are impor­tant for the val­ue of their archi­tec­ture and for their promi­nent role in the dis­sem­i­na­tion of Renais­sance cul­ture. The ideals of the Renais­sance, fos­tered by the Gon­za­ga fam­i­ly, are present in the towns‘ mor­phol­o­gy and archi­tec­ture.