Mantuan landscape is so beautiful, sprinkled with hills, green fields, rivers and canals! You may best enjoy it by riding on horseback: there are several farm accommodations and riding schools where you can hire a horse.
You will surely appreciate Isola Boschina, a woody island in the lower course of Po river: its reforestation during the Eighties enriched it with oaks, white and black poplars, elders, mulberries, hawthorns, ivies, honeysuckles… A paradise where it is not difficult to run upon a hedgehog, a fox, a hare, nor to hear a spotted or a green woodpecker. Still, you may visit a neoclassical rural villa and its intact farm structures, such as porch, sundial, bakery, dovecot, hutch, pigsty, henhouse...
Finally, you must not miss Mincio river natural park, Parco naturale del Mincio in Italian. It is a blend of nature, art and culture, where you can find medieval castles, ducal manors, ancient hunting grounds,  hydraulics masterpieces – like Governolo locks -, and even archaeological sites: the Etruscan one in Forcello and the prehistoric one in Castellaro Lagusello.