Arche Scaligere

A family's pride on the street corner

A few steps beyond Piazza dei Signori, in a small enclosure beside the church of Santa Maria Antica, stand the tombs of the della Scala, the family who ruled Verona in the late Middle Ages. The Veronese call them the Arche Scaligere. The city tourist board ranks them among the most significant monuments of Gothic art.

What makes them memorable is their shape. Instead of lying inside a church, the most important lords were placed outdoors, high on stone canopies, their effigies lying under pinnacles and their armoured figures riding on top. They were meant to be seen from the street, and they still are: the whole group can be studied through the railings.

The della Scala and their chapel

Santa Maria Antica is far older than the tombs. Italian Wikipedia records it as the oratory of a convent founded in 744 or 745 by two sisters, Auctonda and Natalia. After the earthquake of 1117 it was rebuilt in Romanesque style and consecrated in 1185, and the della Scala made it their family chapel in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The most famous of them, Cangrande I, lived from 1291 to 1329 and ruled from 1308. He was a patron of Dante, who praised him in the seventeenth canto of Paradiso. He died in Treviso; when his remains were examined in 2004, researchers found lethal amounts of digitalis, which suggests poisoning rather than the illness long reported.

Cansignorio, the last lord to build a great tomb here, came to power in 1359 after the murder of his brother Cangrande II and died in 1375. For all the violence of his rise, he spent heavily on the city, building the Torre del Gardello on Piazza delle Erbe and a new masonry bridge over the Adige.

Cangrande over the church door

Cangrande's tomb sits above the side entrance of Santa Maria Antica, built according to his own wishes. The city museums attribute its design to the architect of Sant'Anastasia. His effigy lies on the sarcophagus lid, with religious scenes and reliefs of his military campaigns carved on its sides, under a Gothic canopy.

On top rides the figure that has become the emblem of Verona: Cangrande in armour on a horse draped in long trappings, his face set in a broad smile, with a helmet shaped as a dog's head and an ornate sword. The statue is attributed either to Giovanni di Rigino or to Bonino da Campione and dated around 1340 to 1350.

What you see on the tomb is a copy by the sculptor Rodolfo Dusi. The original was taken down in 1909 and moved to the civic museum; it stands today in Castelvecchio, where Carlo Scarpa designed its setting. The museum's own page says it has been there since 1921.

Mastino II and Cansignorio

Mastino II, who died in 1351, began his tomb in 1345, while he was alive. It was originally painted and gilded and had its own fence with four Virtues at the corners. Reliefs of sacred history run around the base, and on the lid two angels watch over his effigy beneath a canopy of trefoil arches. The equestrian figure on top is a copy; the original is kept at Castelvecchio.

Cansignorio's tomb, also commissioned in his lifetime, is the most elaborate of all. Built on a hexagonal plan inside its own hexagonal railing, it rises in six Gothic tabernacles holding warrior saints, with Virtues, Apostles and Gospel figures, and a horseman at the summit. An inscription names the sculptor as Bonino da Campione, and Italian Wikipedia records a cost of ten thousand florins.

The grille and the smaller tombs

Look closely at the ironwork. The wrought-iron fence and the grilles set into the wall along the street are worked with a repeating ladder motif, the emblem of the della Scala, whose name means of the stair.

Inside the enclosure, simpler sarcophagi hold other members of the dynasty, including Mastino I, Alberto I, Bartolomeo I, Alboino and Cangrande II. The tomb of Giovanni della Scala, finished in 1359 by Andriolo de' Santi, was brought here from the church of San Fermo; sources disagree on when it was moved.

The tombs have not survived untouched. Restorations began in 1786 and a thorough campaign started in 1838. Santa Maria Antica itself was restored between 1887 and 1908, when later baroque additions were stripped out to recover its Romanesque look, a project Italian Wikipedia describes as controversial.

How to visit

The street view is the visit for most people, and it is a good one: the tourist board notes that the sarcophagi can be seen fully from outside the enclosure, and the canopies are best read from a few steps back. Allow a quarter of an hour, more with binoculars or a zoom lens for the carving high up. Look for the church door as well: when services or openings allow, the small Romanesque interior is worth a few minutes.

Note The enclosure is a protected monument, not a bench or a ledge: do not climb on the wall or reach through the grilles. Walk the full length of the railings instead, because the three great canopied tombs stand at different points of the enclosure and each needs its own angle.

The tombs make an easy pairing with the Torre dei Lamberti, whose terrace looks down on this corner, and with the courtyard of Juliet's House, a few minutes' walk south. Continue north to the great Gothic church of Sant'Anastasia, then to Castelvecchio later in the day to meet the original Cangrande face to face.