How Piazza dei Signori became the stately room next door to the market square

A room for governing

Piazza dei Signori sits one short passage away from the market bustle of Piazza delle Erbe, yet it feels like another city. Instead of stalls and awnings there is paving, a single statue, and a ring of palaces joined to each other by porticoes and arches, so the square reads almost as an outdoor room rather than a public crossing.

This was the political and administrative heart of medieval Verona. The della Scala family, known as the Scaligers, ruled the city from thirteen sixty to thirteen eighty-seven and built their residences here. Under later Venetian rule the same buildings housed the captain, the podestà, the judges, and the city council. Locals often call the square Piazza Dante, after the statue standing at its center.

Palaces of the Scaligers

The oldest building on the square is Palazzo della Ragione, the medieval town hall raised after the earthquake of eleven seventeen. Work on its corner tower, later known as the Torre dei Lamberti, began in eleven seventy-two, and the main building was finished in eleven ninety-four. In twelve twenty-six representatives of northern Italian cities met inside to renew the Lombard League, a defensive alliance against imperial power. Fires struck the building in twelve eighteen, fifteen forty-one, and seventeen twenty-three.

The Scaligers then built palaces of their own beside it. Cangrande the First della Scala began the Palazzo del Podestà around thirteen eleven, and Dante Alighieri, exiled from Florence, was a long-term guest at his court. Around thirteen sixty-four Cansignorio della Scala rebuilt the Palazzo del Capitanio as a fortified complex around a courtyard, keeping an older brick tower that still stands on the square today.

Venice remakes the square

Verona submitted to Venice in fourteen oh-five, and the new rulers made the Scaliger palaces the residences of their governors rather than replacing them outright. Their great addition to the square was the Loggia del Consiglio, built between fourteen seventy-six and fourteen ninety-three for the city council. It was long credited to the friar and architect Fra Giocondo; modern scholarship instead sees it as the work of a group of Veronese humanists and builders, with Daniele Banda prominent among them.

Michele Sanmicheli later gave the two Scaliger palaces Renaissance entrances, adding a portal for the Palazzo del Capitanio between fifteen thirty-one and fifteen thirty-three, and in fifteen thirty-three a portal for the Palazzo del Podestà modeled on a Roman triumphal arch. In the nineteenth century Giuseppe Barbieri gave Palazzo della Ragione a smooth neoclassical front toward Piazza delle Erbe, while Camillo Boito's restoration between eighteen seventy-four and eighteen ninety-seven reopened its medieval windows and striped masonry, returning some of the older character to the square.

What you actually see

Begin with the Loggia del Consiglio, generally counted as a masterpiece of the Venetian Renaissance and unlike anything else in Verona. Along its roofline stand five statues of ancient men claimed by the city: the poet Catullus, Vitruvius Cerdo, Aemilius Macer, Pliny the Elder, and Cornelius Nepos, carved by Alberto da Milano and other Comacine craftsmen. The building today serves the Province of Verona.

Dante stands at the center of the square, a statue by Ugo Zannoni carved in Carrara marble and standing about three meters high. It was inaugurated on the fourteenth of May, eighteen sixty-five, for the six hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. Behind him, look at the palace fronts for their different centuries: the bands of tufa and brick on Palazzo della Ragione, the plain brick tower of the Capitanio, and Sanmicheli's classical portal on the Palazzo del Podestà, which today houses the Prefecture.

Arches and the legend of the ball

Four of the arches around the square carry statues of learned Veronese figures: Onofrio Panvinio, Girolamo Fracastoro, Scipione Maffei, and Enrico Noris. The best known is Fracastoro, the Renaissance physician and scholar, carved by Danese Cattaneo in fifteen fifty-nine and standing on the arch between the Loggia and the Casa della Pietà, above Via delle Fogge.

He holds a sphere, called the bala in local dialect. Tradition says it will fall on the first true gentleman to pass beneath it; so far it has never fallen. The Arco della Costa leads back toward Piazza delle Erbe, with its own hanging bone, while the small Romanesque church of Santa Maria Antica, once the private chapel of the Scaliger palace, stands beside the Scaliger tombs, forming a natural next stop for anyone lingering in this corner of the city.

The courtyard and the staircase

The Cortile Mercato Vecchio is the old market courtyard tucked inside Palazzo della Ragione. Its showpiece is the Scala della Ragione, an open two-flight staircase in red Veronese marble, built in the mid-fifteenth century and usually dated to fourteen forty-seven. It once had a protective roof, removed during nineteenth-century restoration work, which is why the steps now climb in open air toward the floor above.

After the law courts moved elsewhere, the palace was restored in two thousand seven and became home to the Galleria d'Arte Moderna Achille Forti. Its visit route takes in the columned hall, the frescoed Cappella dei Notai, and the climb up the Torre dei Lamberti, so a single ticketed visit can cover both the interior rooms and the view over the rooftops of the old city.

How to visit

The square and its courtyard are public space, and a careful look at the facades, the arches, and the staircase takes about half an hour on foot, longer if reading every inscription. Add an hour or more for the tower climb, the modern art gallery, or the Scaliger tombs, which sit close enough to form a natural group with the square itself.

For opening arrangements, ticket mechanisms, and any seasonal changes to the tower or gallery, check directly with the relevant office rather than relying on guesswork, since these details are best confirmed on the day. Plan the square as part of a short loop through the Scaliger quarter: from here, Casa di Giulietta and the church of Santa Anastasia are both short walks, and the itineraries page shows how to fit the square into a fuller day in Verona.