Marquetry masterpieces and an iconic garden are my Verona highlights

Verona probably wouldn’t make most Brits' lists of the top 5 dream destinations in Italy … but it probably should. The city is so much more than the Shakespearean associations and the opera festival that draws most tourists from the UK.

A major cross-roads on affluent trading routes since its founding, Verona has all the layers of history you can find in Rome, lashings of the distinctive gothic architecture that makes Venice (its former owner) so romantic, and churches and palaces filled with enough Renaissance art to rival Florence. But it’s a lot less crowded with tourists than its more famous sister cities. And it’s only two hours on a direct flight from London. Perfect for a long weekend, or as a base for longer if you want to include the Italian lakes, the beautiful Venetian back country or … just over an hour on a fast train … Venice itself.

We got our bearings with the Hop On Hop Off bus tour which starts its rounds from the central Piazza Bra, just across a small park from the Roman arena. (£25 for adults for a 24-hour pass.) If you’re unfamiliar with the city and its history, as we were, you may only retain a fraction of the copious commentary. The automatic triggers are often slightly off, leaving you desperately looking around for what the recording is talking about. But it’s a great way to cover a lot of ground and get an introduction to more than 2,000 years of Veronese history.

If you are short on time, start with the B Line. This route runs a minibus, rather than the full open top bus, so is able to drive through part of the historic city centre. It also winds up a forested hillside to a magnificent view of the city and its encircling Adige river. Line A can only go around the outskirts, and about a quarter of its commentary is shared with the tour on the smaller bus. Thus taking both tours is a nice to have, but not strictly necessary.

Whether you ride one or both, you will get a sense of the extraordinary bend in the Adige river that creates almost an apostrophe of land, an easily defensible site for a city in more difficult times. And there were plenty of those. There are Roman walls for holding back barbarians, renaissance castles for fighting off other Italians or invading French armies, and lots of impressive fortifications from the 19th century, when the Austrias and French fought over the place. There are a lot of famous churches, a Roman theatre to match the city’s arena, lots of picturesque bridges and several striking piazzas.

While Piazza Bra is probably most famous for the arena, Piazza Della Erbe is the beating heart of the old town, with market, stalls and restaurants overlooked by handsome houses and towers. Just behind that is the Piazza della Signoria, far less crowded even though it is just a stone’s throw from the other. It’s arguably prettier, with a statue of Dante in the middle… he spent his part of his exile here … and surrounded by the buildings from which mediaeval and renaissance rulers ran the place.

In one corner, you can just spot the Scaligere Tombs, one of Verona‘s artistic masterpieces. Most mediaeval aristocrats like to have their monuments inside churches. The Scaligere must have had quite a penchant for showing off, because they built their tombs outside, on a high traffic corner. They are as detailed and lavish as reliquaries, but each are two or three stories tall. Exactly what you would expect from a dynasty founded by a guy named Cangrande. Literally “big dog”.

I would have liked to have seen the inside of big dog’s castle, now called Castel Vecchio and a museum that combines the delights of wandering around a medieval fortress with lots of art and history. Plus excellent views of the river. Sadly, the museum is closed on Monday, which was the day available for diving into stuff that intrigued me on the bus tour.

Instead I headed for the Giardini Giusti, just across the river at the top that apostrophe of land that was the ancient city centre. Likely to make any expert’s list of top gardens in Italy, these are a classic of the late renaissance style. Goethe, Mozart, Ruskin and the Tsar of Russia were amongst the notable visitors. The place was so famous that, when Verona was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Habsburg emperor had the family officially change their last name to Giusti del Giardino.

Close to the house there are lots of formal hedge parterres and a maze, gravel paths on geometric lines, classical statuary marking central points and narrow spikes of cypress edging the central path. That leads to dramatic stairs and a tower bisecting the steep, forested hill that forms the back half of the garden. Along the sides, things start to get a bit more informal, with some shady bits and less formal statuary, including picturesque jumbles of old Roman tombstones and sarcophagi. I wonder if any of those aristocratic Romans, when planning their memorials, could have imagined they’d become garden ornaments?

The whole garden changes mood dramatically when you hit the steep hillside at its back, where earthen paths twist and wind at crazy angles, their surfaces often broken by thick tree roots or broken shards of ancient pavement. (This is no place for people unsteady on their feet.) Quirky surprises litter your path, like a grotto with fake stalactites that were once covered with shards of mirror. You may think you are at the top when you reach a pretty pavilion held up on delicate marble columns, with a gorgeous view of the city. But you’re not done yet. Follow another path between trees and an enormous old wall and you come to the base of that tower you saw on entry. Climb about 50 circular steps and you’ll come out on yet another radical change of mood; gently-sloping lawns dotted with bushes. The views from here are extraordinary, as you’re now probably the equivalent of eight stories above the formal bit at the front and have a bird’s eye view not just of the city, but of the Giusti family’s lovely villa.

Your entry ticket includes the family apartments inside, which were renovated after they reclaimed the property following significant damage in World War II. (Little is said of the building’s time as the HQ of the Luftwaffe in Italy, no doubt a catalyst for destruction.) While the gardens are the star attraction, it’s fun to have a poke around the house of the family who still owns the place.

The best thing I saw in Verona, however, is barely mentioned in guides. I’d arrived in the neighbourhood before the gardens opened, so popped into Santa Maria Organo. The sign out front talked about an early medieval wooden carving of Christ on a Donkey that was much beloved. I was looking at it when a caretaker beckoned me down a non-descript hallway and into an exquisite sacristy with wooden stalls around the bottom half and lively paintings above. The back of each stall held a marquetry picture of dazzling complexity. City scapes, animals, household objects, scientific tools all done in perfect perspective and depth with tiny pieces of coloured wood.

Another set decorated the backs of the stalls in the choir you enter from the sacristy. Below the lectern there is a wooden panel of a rabbit so lifelike it looks like it may jump away. Its fur is picked out in pine needles. Its reflection shown in water made from wood naturally turned blue by a type of fungi. All of the panels, and all the carving on the frames around them, were created by one man: a monk associated with the church called Fra Giovanni da Verona.

These are some of the most extraordinary examples of marquetry I’ve ever seen. They are as beautiful as those from the Studiolo of the palace in Mantua, part of which is in the Metropolitan Museum of art and all of which is world famous. The Mantua panels are a standard feature in most art history textbooks, while the Verona panels are almost unknown, left to serendipitous discovery at the back of a small church, easily missed if the caretaker doesn’t offer to unveil its secrets. 

Most visitors to Verona will be queue and jostle to stand under the supposed balcony of Juliet. Skip that. If time is short, skip everything else. Get to Santa Maria Organo and be dazzled.