Medieval Verona: the city a single family transformed forever

There is a curious paradox in the way people visit Verona. Most tourists arrive in search of Romeo and Juliet — a fictional story set in the 14th century — and walk unawares among the real monuments of that very century, barely noticing them. The Scaligeri Tombs are a hundred metres from Juliet’s House. San Zeno, one of the masterpieces of Italian Romanesque, is a ten-minute walk from the Arena. And yet they remain in the background, less photographed, less sought out.

It is a pity, because medieval Verona is extraordinary. And not in the generic sense in which every Italian city is said to be extraordinary: in the sense that here, within a perimeter of a few kilometres, a single family left an architectural and artistic imprint with few equivalents in Europe. They were called Della Scala. We know them as the Scaligeri. And Verona, in large part, is still the city they built.

A family of merchants that became a dynasty

The origins of the Scaligeri are not those of a great noble house. In the early 13th century, the head of the family was Jacopino della Scala, a well-off wool merchant with no noble titles. What is certain is that his grandson Mastino, in 1262, was elected Captain of the People of Verona: a guarantor’s title at a time when the city was torn apart by clashes between Guelphs and Ghibellines.

From that moment, history changes pace. In less than a century, the Della Scala go from merchants to lords of a domain extending over much of north-eastern Italy — Vicenza, Padua, Treviso. The peak comes with the rule of Cangrande I (1308–1329): commander, patron, friend of Dante. It is he who turns Verona into a court capable of attracting artists, poets and intellectuals from all over Italy.

The family ruled for 125 years, until 1387, when Visconti troops entered the city by night through gates opened by conspirators. The last lord, Antonio, barricaded himself in the keep of Castelvecchio with his wife and children. The people, weary, did not defend him. It was the end of a dynasty — but its monuments are all still there.

San Zeno: the place where the Commune is born

The Basilica of San Zeno is not only the city’s Romanesque masterpiece: it is, in a sense, the starting point of Verona’s civic history.

The lunette of the portal — the bas-relief above the entrance, made around 1138 — is regarded by art historians as the birth certificate of the Commune of Verona. At the centre, San Zeno in his bishop’s robes blesses two armies lined up at his sides: knights on the right, foot soldiers on the left. The landed nobility and the city bourgeoisie, united under the protection of the patron saint. A document carved in stone, telling of a city choosing how to organise itself.

The bronze portal is another story within the story. The 48 panels covering the two doors — scenes from the Old and New Testament, episodes from the life of San Zeno — were made by two different masters in distant eras: the panels on the left date from the 11th-12th century, those on the right from the 12th-13th. Look closely and you see the difference in style: the older ones have a rougher, more expressive line, the more recent a more elaborate composition. It is like reading two chapters of a book written a century apart.

Inside, among frescoes and crypt, there is also the Altarpiece by Andrea Mantegna — one of the most important works of the Renaissance in Veronese territory. San Zeno is one of those churches you enter meaning to stay twenty minutes and leave an hour later.

Piazza delle Erbe: two thousand years in a single square

Piazza delle Erbe has been the commercial heart of Verona for two thousand years. Before, it was the Roman forum. In the Middle Ages it became the city market. Today it is one of the liveliest squares in northern Italy, with market stalls still occupying the exact centre where the Romans held their public assemblies.

Looking at the square closely, you can make out the marks of all the eras that have overlapped here. The Domus Mercatorum — the medieval seat of the merchants’ guild — faces the east side. The column with the Lion of St Mark, added by the Venetians in 1523, recalls that after the Scaligeri came the Serenissima too. The fountain at the centre, with the statue called Madonna Verona, is Roman in its base and medieval in its basin. Each element is of a different age, and together they form a stratification impossible to find elsewhere.

There is also an element almost no one knows about: the Capitello, a 13th-century marble baldachin at the centre of the square, also called the Berlina. Beneath it the podestà sat at the inauguration ceremony, public edicts were proclaimed — and here the condemned, blasphemers and fraudsters were exposed to the pillory. On its base the Veronese commercial measures are still visible, carved in stone. Medieval Verona was not only art and poetry.

Piazza dei Signori: the drawing room of Scaligeri power

A few steps from Piazza delle Erbe, through the Voltone della Mazzanti, opens Piazza dei Signori — which the Veronese also call Piazza Dante, after the statue of the Supreme Poet at its centre. It is one of the most elegant squares in Italy, and very little visited by tourists compared with the nearby Piazza delle Erbe. A little hidden, a little secluded: exactly as the Scaligeri wanted it, using it as the political and residential heart of their lordship.

On the north side stands the Palazzo del Governo, once the Scaligeri residence, then the seat of Venetian power, today the prefecture. On the east side, the Palazzo della Ragione with the Torre dei Lamberti — 84 metres, the tallest tower in Verona, dominating the entire city. On the west side, the Loggia del Consiglio, considered the city’s first Renaissance building, erected when the Scaligeri had been gone for nearly a century but their urban layout had remained intact.

The statue of Dante is here for a precise reason. The poet stayed in Verona for some seven years in total during his exile: from 1303 to 1304 as the guest of Bartolomeo della Scala, and then from 1312 to 1318 as the guest of Cangrande I, to whom he dedicated the entire Paradiso. Cangrande is named in Canto XVII as the poet’s greatest benefactor. In this square, in the palaces around it, Dante walked, debated, wrote. It is one of those details that make Verona something more than a beautiful medieval city.

The Scaligeri Tombs: a family cemetery worth a museum

The Scaligeri Tombs stand in a small enclosure beside Piazza dei Signori, and you can hardly expect what you find there. A private cemetery, enclosed by a wrought-iron gate decorated with the ladder motif — the family coat of arms. From outside it seems almost discreet. Up close it is one of the most spectacular Gothic works in Europe.

The three monumental tombs — of Cangrande I, Mastino II and Cansignorio — are crowned by carved marble baldachins, Gothic spires, statues of warrior saints and, above all, the great equestrian sculptures of the lords on horseback. Those seen today on the tombs are copies: the originals are at the Museum of Castelvecchio. Cangrande I smiles — an open, vital smile, a very rare case in the celebratory sculpture of the 14th century, which has fascinated historians and visitors for centuries.

The tomb of Cansignorio is the most elaborate of all. He had it built himself, during his lifetime, because he was in poor health and wanted a say in his own funerary monument. Designed by Bonino da Campione, it cost more than ten thousand florins — an exorbitant sum for the time. The result resembles a giant Gothic reliquary, with six warrior saints at the corners and gospel narratives on the sides of the sarcophagus. Cansignorio spared nothing.