Verona

ART AND HISTORY ITINERARIES IN VERONA.

A trip to Verona is a plunge into the emotions of bygone times, of a city that conserves values and forms related to an ancient past of medieval and renaissance splendour, albeit it is in constant expansion in our own day.

This is a land with a rich historical heritage. Long divided by foreign invasion, this land found its unity through its love of art and culture, as testified by its monuments, its museums and its theatres.

Verona's gallery of modern art is situated in Palazzo Forti, part of a block of buildings occupying what was originally a Roman site and now bounded by the roads Via Forti, Via Massalongo, Corso Sant'Anastasia, and Vicolo Due Mori.

The first room in the sculpture gallery houses sculpture, reliefs and epigraphs from the late Medieval and Romanesque periods. Of particular interest is the Sarcophagus of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus, dated 1179, which depicts on the upper section two archers shooting an eagle and the two saints in profile holding palms of martyrdom. Reliefs on the coffin recount their story, from the prayer to God to the renunciation of the idolatry and the consequent death sentence.