Verona - Castel San Felice and the city walls Travel Guides | Verona | Sub Regions | Verona - Castel San Felice and the city walls

Near the top of via Fontana del Ferro a worn path along a grassy track branches off to the right. About 150 m up this path there is a t-junction, with paths heading off left and right along the northern section of city wall. This is an area of olive groves which reaches right down into Veronetta. Head left along the walls to reach the remains of Castel San Felice or right to follow the walls south towards the Giardino Giusti. High walls on both sides mean that glimpses of the city below, though spectacular, are fleeting. In both directions the paths rejoin roads back down into the city after 15 minutes or so. For a longer walk, an archway in the wall just after the castle leads to via Castel San Felice and allows you to join up with the walk detailed in Colline Veronese .

2 via Giardino Giusti, T 045 8034029, Apr-Sep 0900-2000, Oct-Mar 0900-1900. E4.50.

Agostino Giusti, a Venetian knight, planned the Renaissance gardens of Palazzo Giusti in 1570, and they remain true to his original designs today. Behind ornate box hedges, classical statues, fountains and cypress trees (one of which Goethe wrote about) the gardens rise up the hill on terraces and paths to give great views of the city.

Steps from the main avenue lead to a grotto which was once encrusted with glass and shells but now has no more than some grotty, not to mention phallic, stalactites. Above this is a balcony with a twisted face, which was designed to emit flames from its mouth. Spiral stairs lead up to this, and to the higher levels of the garden. Daisies grow on the lawns and paths between trees are, in places, almost wild. This combination of formal and informal gives the Giardino Giusti a friendly, fairytale feel. There are claims that the maze here is one of the oldest in Europe, but until the hedges grow high enough to avoid being stepped over, it will remain unchallenging.

Lungadige Porta Vittoria 9, T 045 8079400, F 045 8000804, http://www.museostorianaturaleverona.it Mon-Thu, Sat 0900-1900, Sun 1400-1900. E2.10.

Covering zoology, botany and prehistory, and all housed in the handsome Renaissance Palazzo Lavezola Pompei, built by Michele Sanmicheli around 1550, Verona’s natural history museum is, in the main, a fairly old-fashioned collection of stuffed animals, minerals and fossils in glass cases. There are some interesting exhibits, however, and some of the fossils, in particular, are spectacular. The best and biggest fossils come from Bolca, to the northeast of the city, now 900 m above sea level, but 50 million years ago a steamy combination of sea, islands, volcanoes, and some large scary-looking spiny fish. The geology section has lots of colourful stones in more glass cases, as well as a scale model of Mount Etna. More interestingly, the main staircase has a display of an enormous number of slabs of different varieties and colours of Veronese marble. In the animals section there are the bones of a grizzly bear, a species which lived in caves all along the southern edge of the Alps until the last great glacial expansion 12,000 years ago. On the first floor there are a crocodile skull, two stuffed tigers and some very large spiders as well as the 3.72 m long skull of a fin whale killed after a collision with a ship in the Gulf of Genoa. Aqua, Terra, Aria (Water, Earth, Air) is an attempt at a more modern slant on the story of evolution, but really it’s more of the same with added sound effects and smart lighting. Back on the ground floor on the way out there is an excellent three-dimensional

The city's cathedral in the latter part of the first millennium, Santo Stefano may have first been built as early as the 5th century. It has an unusual octagonal tower as well as more typical Veronese Romanesque pink and cream alternating tufa and brick. Inside there are works by Domenico Brusasorci – both above the entrance and in the dome. More striking, however, is the ornate white and gold Cappella degli Innocenti, with three spectacular frescoes from 1621, two of which are grotesquely brutal, by Bassetti, Ottini and Orbetto. On opposite walls, two 14th-century sepia frescoes by Giovanni Battista dal Moro show an early understanding of the use of three-dimensional space. The 10th-century crypt, usually kept closed, has remains of 12th- and 13th-century frescoes.

Lungadige San Giorgio in Braida. Mon-Sat 0800-1100, 1700-1900. Free.

Founded originally as a Benedictine monastery in 1046, San Giorgio was taken over by the Augustinians, and by the time of the Scaligeri domination was an important power base in the city – Scaligeri offspring were occasionally nominated as abbots. The building gained its current shape in the Renaissance with the addition of an imposing dome by Michele Sanmicheli around 1530. The single nave, barrel-vaulted interior has decorated 16th-century side chapels. Works of art of particular note are Paolo Veronese’s complicated and colourful masterpiece The martyrdom of St George, Tintoretto’s Baptism of Christ above the entrance and Girolamo dai Libri’s Sacra Conversazione in the fourth chapel on the left. A red button to the right of the altar illuminates Veronese's painting, but you can't get very close to it. The church's name, in Braida, probably refers to the part of the Adige which widens at this point, making it a suitable area for boatsmen and merchants to stop.

Steps down to the river from outside San Giorgio lead to a 200 m riverside promenade which curves around to Ponte Pietra and gives some of the best views of the city.

A of the hills above Verona is available from bookshops in the city for E3.10. It marks various paths to the north of the city as well as detailing (in English as well as Italian) the Dorsale delle Frazioni, a 15-km walk along the hills from Parona to the city’s west to Montorio to the east, passing through Quinzano, Avesa, Poiano and Novaglie. Alternatively, a good four-or five-hour circuit follows path ‘10’ from Verona (it can be joined just north of Castel San Felice at the northernmost point of the city walls) to Poiano, either ‘D’ (the Dorsale delle Frazioni) or the longer, hillier ‘3’ across the hills to Avesa, and route ‘6’ back down into the centre of the city. Most of these paths are traffic-free and are marked (with a blue and yellow square and the number of the route). However, these markings can often disappear at vital moments, and the map mentioned above is highly recommended.

Travel Guides | Verona | Sub Regions | Verona - Castel San Felice and the city walls
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