Casa Gioiosa

Casa Gioiosa, the House of Joy, was a fifteenth century school in Mantua, Italy, housed in a building owned by the Gonzaga family and first built as a place for court pleasures and dances. In 1423 Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, marquis of Mantua, gave the house to the humanist teacher Vittorino da Feltre, who made it a school and boarding house for the Gonzaga children, the sons and daughters of other noble families and poor pupils who paid no fee. Pupils studied rhetoric, mathematics, philosophy, Latin and Greek, and also trained their bodies through games, fencing, running, riding and swimming, so that they would grow into well-rounded people. The school became a model for Renaissance education, and many of its pupils became politicians, churchmen and humanists. Vittorino led it until his death in 1446, after which his former pupils Jacopo da San Cassiano and Ognibene da Lonigo took over.