Carlo Scarpa's museum
On the banks of the Adige, Castelvecchio is the great castle built between 1354 and 1356 by Cangrande II della Scala, lord of Verona, as both a residence and a fortress, ready for escape in case of a revolt by the citizens. For this purpose he also built the Ponte Scaligero, a fortified brick bridge with swallow-tail merlons, which allowed him to reach the countryside towards the Tyrol. Blown up by the retreating Germans in 1945, the bridge was rebuilt using the original materials recovered from the river.
Since 1924 the castle has housed the Museo di Castelvecchio, transformed between 1958 and 1974 by the Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa into one of the most admired museums of the twentieth century: a masterpiece of museography, in which old and new materials dialogue, and every sculpture and painting has its own carefully studied position and light. The most famous solution is the placement of the equestrian statue of Cangrande I, suspended on a concrete platform in an open space between the buildings. The collections include Romanesque sculpture, paintings by Pisanello, Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Veronese and Tiepolo, and medieval arms and jewellery.
Tip: walking across the Ponte Scaligero is free and offers a beautiful view of the river; the museum is closed on Monday mornings.
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