Religious, Spiritual sights in Verona
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A
Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore
A masterpiece of Romanesque architecture, the striped brick and tuffo stone Basilica di San Zeno Maggiore was built in honour of the city’s patron saint from the 12th to 14th centuries. Enter through the graceful flower-filled cloister into the vast nave, lined with 12th- to 15th-century frescoes depicting Jesus, Mary Magdelene modestly covered in her curtain of golden hair and St George casually slaying a dragon atop a startled horse. Under the rose window depicting the Wheel of Fortune are meticulously detailed 12th-century bronze doors, including a scene of an exorcism with a demon yanked from a woman’s mouth. Painstaking restoration is reviving Mantegna’s 1457–59 …
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B
Duomo
Verona’s 12th-century duomo is a striking striped Romanesque building, with polychrome reliefs and the bug-eyed statues of Charlemagne’s paladins Roland and Oliver, by medieval master Nicolò, on the west porch. Nothing about this sober facade hints at the extravagant interior, frescoed over the 16th to 17th centuries with angels in the trompe l’œil architecture. At the left end of the nave is the Cartolari-Nichesola Chapel, designed by Jacopo Sansovino with a vibrant Titian Assumption, showing astonished crowds pointing at the airborne Madonna.
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C
Chiesa di San Fermo
At the river end of Via Leoni, Chiesa di San Fermo is actually two churches in one: Franciscan monks raised the 13th century Gothic church right over an original 11th- century Romanesque structure. Inside the main Gothic church, you’ll notice a magnificent timber carena di nave, a ceiling reminiscent of an upturned boat’s hull. In the right transept are 14th-century frescoes, including some fragments depicting episodes in the life of St Francis. Stairs from the cloister lead underground to the spare but atmospheric Romanesque church below.
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D
Chiesa di Sant’Anastasia
North of the Arche Scaligere stands the Gothic 13th to 15th century Chiesa di Sant’Anastasia, Verona’s largest church and a showcase for Veronese art. The multitude of frescoes is overwhelming, but don’t overlook Pisanello’s storybook-quality fresco St George Setting out to Free the Princess from the Dragon in the Pisanelli Chapel, or the 1495 holy water font featuring a lucky hunchback by Paolo Veronese’s father, Gabriele Caliari.
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E
Chiesa di San Lorenzo
Southwest from Piazza delle Erbe towards the Ponte Scaligero is the Chiesa di San Lorenzo, a Romanesque church raised in the early 12th century but much altered with Gothic and Renaissance additions. The most unusual element – virtually unique in Italy – are the two cylindrical towers that flank the entrance.
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