Verona - South of the centro storico Travel Guides | Verona | Sub Regions | Verona - South of the centro storico

At the other end of via Mazzini from the enormous spread of piazza Erbe, piazza Bra forms an alternative centrepiece to the city, with the huge amphitheatre of the Arena dominating it. To the west, Castelvecchio has all the attributes you’d wish for in a castle, plus a great bridge and an interesting museum. Further west, San Zeno is justifiably the city’s favourite church, but to the south there is much less of interest. As the roads widen and become more modern towards the station, the city loses its antique feel, and, though there are occasional points of interest such as Juliet’s supposed tomb, the city becomes rather plain.

Sights

The name ‘Bra’ is a shortening of the Lombard braida, meaning widening. Outisde of the original Roman city walls, the piazza was not considered a piazza at all until Sanmicheli’s building of the Palazzo degli Honori in the 16th century. It wasn’t until the Listone (the wide marble-paved promenade) was paved in 1782 that piazza Bra became the most popular spot for the passegiata, the evening stroll.

These days it is a sprawling hub of the city, a strange irregular shape, bordered (and dominated) by the Arena on one side, the smart buildings and cafés along the Listone on another, a well preserved stretch of the 13th-century Scaligeri walls and the Gran Guardia on another, and finally the 19th-century neo-classical Palazzo Barbieri. The space these disparate elements enclose has at its centre an area of trees and an ugly modern fountain.

The double arch gates of Portoni Bra, complete with a clock, which lead south from the piazza onto corso Porta Nuova, through which many modern travellers enter the old city, were built in 1480 by the Viscontis, primarily to carry a walkway from Castelvecchio along the top of the mura comunali (communal wall) to the Visconti citadel to the southeast of piazza Bra. From here, keeping to the left side of the square, the Listone is a wide pavement polished by centuries of strolling feet. Its buildings, behind the rather touristy cafés which line this side of the square, are piazza Bra's most attractive. Most famous is number 18, the sturdy Palazzo degli Honori, built by Sanmicheli in 1555. Garibaldi addressed the Veronese people from the balcony here, in 1867. The Gran Guardia, next to the Portoni Bra, was designed by Domenico Curtoni, Sanmicheli's nephew, in 1610, but work was suspended in 1614 and the building was not completed until 1821. The ostentatiously grandiose Palazzo Barbieri (also known as the Gran Guardia Nuova) was built between 1836 and 1848 to Corinthian-style designs by Giuseppe Barbieri and is now used as the city hall. After damage in the Second World War, the semicircular appendage was added behind.

piazza Bra, T 045 8003204, http://www.arena.it Mon 1330-1930, Tue-Sun 0830-1930, 0900-1530 during opera season. E3.10, E1 on the first Sun of the month.

Verona's most famous sight is its giant elliptical Roman amphitheatre, the third largest still in existence after the Colisseum in Rome and the little-visited amphitheatre in Capua. Still dominating much of the city, it is used as a 20,000-seater stadium and a theatre for the summer opera season. In Roman times it may have held even more – up to 30,000 are thought to have watched gladiatorial combat and animal fights here after it was built in the 1st century AD. The ala, or wing, near to the beginning of via Mazzini, is all that remains of the outer ring of the amphitheatre, most of which was destroyed in the 1183 earthquake. Originally this outer ring was 152 m across at the widest part. The surviving inner ring has 72 pairs of arches, one above the other. Inside there are 44 rows of seats with 64 vomitoria, the entrances onto the seats from the long ambulatories, the passageways inside the structure.

Until Gallienus incorporated the Arena into his extended city defences in 285 AD, the Arena stood outside the city walls. In the Middle Ages shops were built into the arches and it became a haunt of prostitutes. It also seems to have constantly remained a source of pride for the people of the city, however, and though it has at times been used as a source of stone, it has also been patched up through the ages, and it remains remarkably intact. In 1913 Verdi's Aida was performed in the Arena, and it has been the setting for the famous summer opera season ever since.

Apart from its sheer size and extraordinary antiquity, the most startling aspect of the Arena is how similar to modern stadiums it is. Although it's hard to beat watching an opera here, there's also something to be said for visiting in midwinter, when, without stages and lighting rigs, the stark scale of the place is easier to appreciate.

Behind the Arena, in a small area called piazza Mura di Gallieno, is one of the few remaining pieces of the city walls constructed in a hurry by the Roman emperor in 258 AD. Despite houses being built into them, the haphazard nature of their construction is still obvious.

piazza Bra 28, T 045 8003204. Mon 1330-1930, Tue-Sun 0830-1400. E2.10. On the right just to the south of the Portoni Bra, off the southwestern corner of piazza Bra.

Scipione Maffei, 1675-1755, was one of the great collectors of Greek and Roman inscriptions and stone carvings. His set of 600 fragments still makes up one of the world's most important collections of ancient text. The first floor has around 100 Greek inscriptions and sculptures, some very well preserved, especially the sepulchre of a woman (number 43), complete with an angel playing an instrument. Also striking is number 77, a carving of two young men – Pamphilos and Alexandros – with horses, and two symbolic snakes wrapped around the trees. A terrace on this floor also gives great views over piazza Bra. The second floor has some wonderfully detailed sarcophagi, and some Etruscan urns in terracotta, some still coloured. The courtyard outside, which you can visit, is filled with pieces of Roman columns and carvings, some looking implausibly new. Three large sides of a tomb here came from a 2nd-century Veronese temple to Bacchus.

stradone San Fermo, T 045 8007287. Mon-Sat 0930-1800, Sun 1300-1800. E2, E5 for combined ticket for five main churches.

East of piazza Bra, by Ponte Navi, the church of San Fermo is a complicated, red-and-white striped mix of Romanesque and Gothic styles. The stripes, characteristic of Veronese Romanesque architecture, are made up of alternating brick and tufa. The 24 bronze door panels are a recent addition, made by Luciano Minguzzi in 1997. The structure is actually made up of two churches, one piled on the other. The dark atmospheric San Fermo Inferiore was built between 1065 and 1143, the towering San Fermo Maggiore added from 1261 to 1332. The interior of the upper church has a vast and ornate wooden ribbed vault ceiling which gives the impression of being inside the hull of an enormous upturned boat. Panels in the ceiling are decorated with 416 portraits of saints. All of these are reproduced on a panel along a wall of the nave. Other highlights include Pisanello’s mournful frescoes around the Brenzoni mausoleum to the left of the entrance, and fantastical frescoes on the vaults of the apse and on its surrounding triumphal arch, the latter attributed to Lorenzo Veneziano. Ruskin wrote of the beautiful façade that it was “chiselled and fitted with exquisite precision, all Venetian work being coarse in comparison”.

The Chiostro Francescano (cloister), which you pass on your way down to the lower church, can be viewed through a barred window, but is not open to the public. It is dotted with various headless statues. San Fermo Inferiore is a cool, atmospheric Romanesque space, with fragmented 12th- and 14th-century frescoes and heavy stone pillars between three aisles. Some of the flagstones have been lifted to reveal the foundations of an even older 5th-century Paleo-Christian structure.

corso Castelvecchio 2, T 045 592985, F 045 8010729, http://www.comune.verona.it/castelvecchio/cvsito Mon 1330-1930, Tue-Sun 0830-1930, ticket office closes at 1845. E3.10, free first Sun of month. For guided tours T 045 8000466, F 045 8000804. Bookshop Mon 1330-1800, Tue-Sun 0830-1800. Art library Mon-Fri 0900-1800, Sat 0900-1400.

Now the Civic Museum of Art, Cangrande II della Scala built the Castelvecchio as Castello San Martino in Aquaro between 1354 and 1356, more to protect himself from the Veronese population than because of any fear of outsiders. The castle was renamed Castelvecchio (’old castle’) by the Milanese Visconti when they built Castel San Pietro and Castel San Felice. The wing alongside the river was built by Napoleonic forces at the beginning of the 19th century. Previously this side of the parade ground was open to the water.

The castle continued to be used as a military site until 1921, when it was chosen as the site for the city’s civic art collection. Carlo Scarpa’s influential and respected 1958-1964 restoration completed the transition into a modern exhibition space. Scarpa’s cleverness was in stripping out previous refurbishments and making his conversion obviously modern, so that it sits with the bare structure of the castle rather than trying to be a part of it.

The ground floor is set aside for sculpture and objects found in and around Verona. The first room has stone reliefs from the early medieval and Romanesque periods as well as Longobard jewellery, coins, spoons and a silver plate. The relief of Christ between St Peter and St Paul, taken from the Duomo, was sculpted by Peregrinus in the 1120s. He is credited with being the first to introduce the Romanesque style to the city. In the centre of the room, and centre of attention, is the sarcophagus of martyred saints, Sergius and Bacchus. Around the stone sides the story of their downfall is told in some detail, Bacchus eventually being clubbed to death and Sergius decapitated. On the lid two archers shoot at an eagle.

In Room 2, two beautiful statues of St Catherine and St Cecilia are the enigmatic highlights, though St John the Baptist also has a certain wooden charm. All three of these are from the first half of the 14th century and were taken from Sant’Anastasia.

After another two rooms of religious statuary, a 14th-century tomb slab bears the inscription “Why are you so proud, gentlemen? Why such blindness? What I am now you will be and you cannot avoid it. Give what you have while it is still yours; after death it is yours no longer. Youth passes like a flower and the wind.”

Outside the sculpture gallery, the large bell is from Torre del Gardello, at the end of piazza Erbe. On one side is a depiction of San Zeno fishing, while on the other, a crowned, winged dog up a ladder is the symbol of Cangrande della Scala.

Following the trail of rooms up through the dungeons into the palace area of the castle, a painting of the Madonna Enthroned with Child in Room 7 begins to show some Giotto-esque evolution towards the Renaissance, away from the stark primitivism of the stoned-looking Madonna del Latte opposite. Also here is the sword of Cangrande, taken from his tomb in 1921 to mark the sixth centenary of Dante’s death.

Room 8 contains three sinopie, or preparatory drawings, which were uncovered when the Circle of Altichiero (also here) was removed from San Zeno. For whatever reason, only the composition of the third was accepted.

Room 10, the Pisanello room, is highly frescoed with original della Scala symbols and patterns. Pisanello, who trained in the city, was almost certainly responsible for the strikingly beautiful Madonna of the Quail, seeming to be a precursor of much later painters such as Klimt with its magical and ornate qualities. Jacopo Bellini is also represented here, as is Pannonio, whose Madonna’s pearls glisten especially effectively.

The city’s collection of Flemish paintings is kept in Room 11. Here Van Cleef’s Interior with Kitchen is wonderfully busy and bawdy, while Leyden’s Crucifixion is colourful yet atmospherically twisted and pained.

Giovanni Bellini’s stark Crucifixion dominates the large Hall of the Reggia, though two of his paintings in Room 13, upstairs, both depictions of the Madonna and Child, outshine it.

Rooms 14-16 concentrate on three Veronese painters, Francesco Morone, Francesco Bonsignori, and Liberale. None of these, however, quite manage the Renaissance subtlety of expression or dynamics of composition of Andrea Mantegna’s Holy Family with a Female Saint in Room 17. In Room 18, Giolfino’s Stories of St Agatha is primitive, but notable for its depiction of 15th-century piazza dei Signori.

Through a small section of weaponry you come out to Verona’s most famous sculpture, the striking Equestrian Monument of Cangrande I della Scala, the most successful of the Scaligeri leaders of the city. Taken from his tomb (where a copy now stands), it would originally have been painted. In the 17th century the statue was knocked off its plinth by a bolt of lightning. It was moved here in 1911. Sitting back in his saddle, Cangrande surveys the world with a broad but enigmatic smile. Its sculptor, though clearly exceptionally talented, remains unknown. The same hands are, however, also thought to be responsible for the similar, though comparatively lifeless, statue of Mastino II, currently at the foot of the stairs to the Sala Boggian, the temporary exhibition space in the corner of the castle.

In Room 20, Morando’s ambitious and colourful 16th-century altarpiece is a virtuoso Renaissance work of art, as are his four saints in the same room. He is outdone, however, for vitality, humour and humanity by Gianfrancesco Caroto’s small Portrait of a Child with a Drawing.

In Room 21, Caroto’s brother Giovanni’s self-portrait with his wife, Placida, is a fragment of an altarpiece destroyed by fire, but still retains enormous power and serenity, as does an enigmatic Portrait of a Monk by Moretto in the same room.

Tintoretto (1518-1594) and Veronese (1528-1588) are probably the two best known of the city’s painters, though both did some of their best work in Venice. Both are represented in Room 22.

Amongst the Mannerists in Room 23, Palma il Giovane’s Imploring for the Cessation of the Plague in Verona is the strongest, while in Room 24, the city’s 17th-century taste for the dark, chiaroscuro figures of Caravaggio is demonstrated in Basetti’s Portrait of an Old Man with a Book and Bernardi’s Holy Family. The 17th-century continues in similarly dramatic form in Room 25 with Strozzi’s Expulsion From Eden. Ridolfi’s two canvases of the Annunciation from the church of Santa Croce are beautiful but oddly different in style, the Virgin baroque, the angel more Venetian in character.

In the final room, Room 26, Giordano’s Cupid lifts Ariadne’s blue cloak to show her nude body to Bacchus, while Theseus sails away into the distance on the right.

Built at the same time as the Castle, in the mid-14th century, Castelvecchio’s bridge (also known as Ponte Scaligeri) was an escape route, away from the city towards the friendly north. The bridge was only made accessible from the city in 1870, after the unification of Italy, when an opening was made in the castle wall and a ramp built across the Collegio courtyard. Of the bridge’s three spans, the one nearest the castle is larger than the others. This was to allow trading boats to pass through. Like Ponte Pietra downstream, the Castelvecchio bridge was reconstructed after it was blown up by the fleeing Germans at the end World War II.

Beside Castelvecchio, this Roman triumphal arch, designed by Vetruvius, once stood on the via Postumia, to the south of the city walls. The paving stones beneath are also Roman, as are the cart ruts worn into them. The arch was built in the first century AD to honour the local Gavia family, whose statues would have stood in the niches now facing the river. It was reconstructed in its present position in 1932. Beyond, the piazza Castelvecchio has good views of the river.

corso Cavour, T 045 592813. Mon-Sat 0930-1800, Sun 1300-1800. E2, E5 for combined ticket for five main churches.

Halfway between Porta Borsari and Castelvecchio, San Lorenzo has possibly the city’s most beautiful interior. A simple, uncluttered and largely unaltered 12th-century Romanesque space, the cool nave and two aisles are separated by alternate marble columns and striped brick and tufa pillars. Arches support a matroneo or women’s gallery with more arches which runs around three sides of the church above the aisles. The whole place is perfectly proportioned, and the stone and brick walls add a sense of style. Fragments of frescoes are from the 12th and 15th centuries. Above the altar is Domenico Brusasorci’s 1566 Virgin and Child with Saints John, Lorenzo and Agustino. The façade, which can be seen by exiting through a door at the back of the church, is 'bookended' between two stone towers. The marble porch above the side entrance was added in the 15th century. Pieces of columns in the courtyard outside are from an earlier 8th-century church on the same site.

Palazzo Bevilacqua, opposite San Lorenzo on corso Cavour, was designed by Michele Sanmicheli in 1530 and is considered a Renaissance masterpiece. Architectural details such as the spiral fluting on the first floor, are borrowed from Porta Borsari along the road.

piazza San Zeno, T 045 592813. Mon-Sat 0830-1800, 1300-1800. E2, E5 for combined ticket for five main churches.

Verona’s most famous and most popular church is also its most spectacular. An enormous, pale, weather-beaten, sun-bleached yet elegant building, it dominates the southwest corner of the city. Inside it is a majestic space, with characteristic Veronese Romanesque stripes of stone and brick, pink marble columns, an impressive ‘keel’ wooden ceiling and faded pastel tones shining in the sunlight which streams in.

Zeno himself arrived in the city from Northern Africa in the 4th century AD and is surrounded by legend. He was ordained bishop of Verona in 362 and was a keen fisherman – there is much iconography around the city of him with a fish on the end of a line.

Facing San Zeno from its piazza in front of the church, the 13th-century Benedictine tower to the left (all that remains of the monastery that once stood there) acts as a sturdy counterpoint to the basilica’s ornate beauty. The monastery was originally built here in the 9th century, together with a church on the site of an existing Paleo-Christian chapel. King Pepin consecrated the site in 806. In 963, after damage inflicted on it by the invading Hungarians, rebuilding was done, and a new church consecrated. 11th-century work to extend the building to its current size was set back by extensive damage in the 1117 earthquake, whereupon the current design was implemented between 1120 and 1138. The great rose window, known as the Ruota della Fortuna (Wheel of Fortune), with its figures rising and falling, was added by Brioloto around 1200.

To the right of the façade, the 62 m-belltower rises unattached to the main building, emphasizing its height. Built between 1045 and the middle of the 12th century, it also has the characteristic stripes of red brick and creamy volcanic tufa stone, as well as a conical roof.

On the façade itself, the work of Nicolò is recognisable from his portal to the Duomo, with a porch resting on two columns, which in turn sit on two lions. The bas-relief scenes to the right of the porch are also his, including stories from the Old Testament and the legend of King Theodoric hunting a deer on horseback and being led down into hell. Theodoric, though his influence on the city was largely positive, was never forgiven for destroying a church. One of Nicolò’s collaborators, Guglielmo, is responsible for the largely New Testament scenes on the other side. The bas-relief in the lunette above the doors retains some of its original colouration, protected as it is from the elements by the porch above. It depicts San Zeno converting the city to Christianity. The famous brass doors of the church are now only viewable from the inside.

The entrance to the church is through a gate into the cloister between the monastery and the façade. The cloister itself is a beautiful space. Arched with double columns, similar to those in the Duomo’s cloister, there is a loggia on the north side which originally housed a fountain for ablutions.

From the cloister you enter the church through a side door, coming into a large, light-filled space with a central nave and two aisles divided by alternate pillars and columns. At the front of the church, steps on either side rise to a raised presbytery, while steps in the centre go down to the crypt below, inaccessible, but with St Zeno’s tomb visible at its end. Frescoes, notably those either side of the presbytery, show the first signs of Giotto’s influence on the city’s art, and an evolution of style away from the medieval towards the Renaissance.

Faces in some of these works, such as St George killing the dragon and surrounding scenes on the right, begin to look more human and there is some limited use of perspective, shadow, and three-dimensional space. These same frecoes also show a particularly ancient taste for graffiti – some of the scratched inscriptions, in Latin, go back to as early as 1390. Opposite St George, among more frescoes on the other wall, the Crucifixion is attributed to Altichiero.

Mantegna’s 1457-59 triptych altarpiece, Maestà della Vergine (Madonna, Angels and Saints), takes the first tentative steps seen in San Zeno’s frescoes to a whole new level to create a celebrated Renaissance masterpiece. The painting is important for some of its stylistic innovations: the space seems to extend across the three panels and back into the distance. An ancient pillared structure behind the figures is used to create a sense of depth, accentuated by a hanging decoration painted across the front to create foreground, and clouds behind. The composition of figures follows the perspective of this structure back into the painting. Furthermore, the figure reading, on the far right, faces diagonally out of the picture, another Renaissance ploy to enhance the sense of space and depth.

The 14th-century frescoes on the triumphal arch above Mantegna’s masterpiece, attributed to Martino da Verona, also play with architecture and perspective.

At the other end of the church, the 48 brass panels of the 12th-century doors are now badly lit and hard to see. They are illustrated with Biblical scenes and stories from the life of San Zeno. Those on the left door (on the right as you look from inside the church) are older, predating the 1117 earthquake. Many have great narrative force and are both impressively intricate and visually striking.

Francesco Turbido’s altarpiece at this end of the church, to the left of the doors, is another fine Renaissance work: a busy composition of the Madonna and Child with three other saints, one of which is San Zeno.

strada A Provolo 28. Jun-Sep 0800-1230, 1500-1930, Oct-May, 0800-1230, 1500-2000. Free.

While the church itself is fairly unremarkable, San Bernardino’s cloister, the Chiostro Sant’Antonio, is an attractive, open, quiet place with birdsong, striking wrought-iron gates, daisies, flaking paint, ancient graffiti, frescoes and tombstones. The highlight, however is the ex-library of the monastery, the beautifully frescoed Sala Morone, which you may have to ask to see.

via Galliano, T 045 8103529, F 045 8199449. Jun-mid-Sep, Mon-Sun 0930-2030. E5.50 all day, E3.90 half day, kids (13 and under) E3.30/E2.90. Five minutes walk west from Porta Palio.

Verona's municipal swimming pool is spectacular. There are four super-clean pools: two junior and two olympic-size, one of which has lanes. There is a big grassy area, there are free sun loungers, a free cloakroom and the 16th-century city walls rise up one side of the complex. Swimming caps are obligatory but can be bought on-site for E3.

via del Pontiere 35, T 045 8000361 Mon 1345-1930, Tue-Sun 0830-1930. E2.60, free first Sun of month.

Set in a former Capuchin monastery, the supposed site of Juliet’s tomb (and therefore also of her and Romeo’s deaths) is surprisingly evocative, especially if you can manage to visit outside peak times when the cold, damp and quiet of the dark sunken chamber are allowed to predominate. The fact that this was certainly somebody’s tomb adds to the ability to suspend disbelief, at least for a moment. In the tomb chambers themselves there is none of the kitsch which prevails in Juliet’s house . The only object of dubious taste here is an Albero dei Desideri, a wishing tree, beside the pergola entrance to the museum. It is covered by various wishes of members of the public on scraps of paper or postcards, many wishing for Romeo and Juliet-related romance, but with happier endings, presumably.

The Fresco Museum tends to be overlooked, or at least rushed through, by those wishing to visit the tomb, and suffers a degree of credibility loss because of its permanent juxtaposition with the cult of a fictional character. This is a shame, as the museum contains some of the city’s best Renaissance works, though many are badly damaged.

Verona was once known as the ‘painted city’ (urbs picta), so numerous were its frescoes, many from the Renaissance. Many were brought here when their life as frescoes, exposed to the elements was already coming to an end. Others were salvaged from the riverfront palazzi which were demolished after the 1882 floods. The museum starts on the first floor with some of the latter examples, including Bernardino India and Domenico Brusasorci’s 16th-century frescoes from the Palazzo di Fionio della Seta, once considered one of the city’s most beautiful buildings. Most of the other great Veronese Renaissance painters are also represented here: Del Moro, Torbido, Altichiero, Morone and Farinati. Del Moro’s Child with a Dog is tantalisingly the only remaining fragment of the frescoes which once decorated the façade of the Bevilacqua-Lazise palace.

Going further back in time, one room has the rare multi-layered medieval frescoes from the shrine of St Nazaro and St Celso, some dated as far back as 996, though most are 12th-century. The style is radically different from those of the Renaissance, with strong lines and primitive figures.

The highlight of the museum is the recreation of the room in the Palazzo Guarienti which held Paolo Farinati’s mythological frescoes. Though the fireplace and the windows are not originals, the room is laid out exactly as it was, and is the perfect way to view Farinati’s Renaissance masterpieces (plastic fig trees notwithstanding). The three graces on the end wall are particularly well executed as are the women playing instruments in the corners of the room. Other featured characters include Mercury, Venus and Diana.

Downstairs in the 17th-century church of San Francesco, the highlights among a collection of paintings are Venetian Girolamo Bonsignori’s Annunciation, with delicate botanical detail, Gianfrancesco Caroto’s desperately sad Three Archangels and Antonio Palma’s richly detailed Adoration of the Magi.

In the basement there is a collection of Roman amphorae – bottles which would have been used for transporting and storing oil, food and wine.

c/o ITIS Gallileo Ferraris, via del Pontiere 40, T 045 505855. Mon-Fri 1400-1730 but also most mornings from 0800-1200. Free.

You might not expect a museum of antique radios to be very exciting, and the fact that it was inside a technical institute might not inspire you either. However, although the setting is very plain, the radios themselves are a revelation – from finely carved art deco pieces to mammoth juke-box like machines to small portable Bakelite gems, they are, mostly, beautiful objets d’art, and a fine contrast to Juliet’s tomb opposite.

viale del lavoro 8, T 045 8298111, F 045 8298288, http://www.veronafiere.it Tickets, T 045 8298170

Verona's trade fair, to the south of the old city in the industrial zone, is known primarily for hosting Vinitaly, Italy's biggest wine fair, in April, but also has fairs covering everything from minerals to nautical equipment, agriculture to buses. Tickets are available from the veronafiere website or by phone, though many fairs have restrictions on the numbers of non-trade visitors. Special buses run from the centre of the city during large fairs.

Travel Guides | Verona | Sub Regions | Verona - South of the centro storico
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