Castel St Pietro Historical Timeline

The hill has been fortified for longer than Verona has existed below it, and almost nothing of that is visible — because in 1801 Napoleonic troops mined the castle that stood here and destroyed most of it. What you climb to now is the Austrian barracks built on the cleared ground.

Chronology

1. Iron Age A pre-Roman settlement occupies the hill. Its advantage has always been the same one: it commands the river bend and the crossing below.
2. early 1st century B.C. A Roman arx, a fortified sacred precinct, is built to guard the passage of the Adige.
3. 8th century The church of San Pietro is already standing and is restored. It gives the hill the name it still carries, long after the church itself has gone.
4. 890 Berengar establishes a castrum here, formalising the hill as a defensive site rather than a religious one.
5. 1393 Gian Galeazzo Visconti has a far more imposing castle built — six years after the Visconti took Verona from the Scaligeri and began garrisoning Castelvecchio below.
6. 1703 The infantry barracks are enlarged to take a garrison doubled from 150 men to 300, after earlier works in 1627. The hill is by now purely military.
7. 1801 Napoleonic soldiers mine and destroy most of the castle. This single act is why 2,500 years of continuous occupation have left so little to see on the summit.
8. 1852–1858 The Austrians build the present barracks on the cleared site, as part of the Habsburg fortress system. Its plainness follows from housing soldiers rather than impressing anyone.
9. 1934 The complex passes to the municipality, and from 1939 to 1949 it houses the Cignaroli Academy.
10. 2002 A restoration plan is begun with the aim of turning the building into a city museum — still the reason the interior is not part of a normal visit.

Why the view is the attraction

The terrace is free and open; the building behind it is not, which surprises people who climbed expecting a castle interior. What the site offers instead is the thing that made it worth fortifying for twenty-five centuries: the Adige’s loop, the crossing at Ponte Pietra, the Roman theatre directly below, and the old city laid out at an angle that makes its Roman grid legible.

• Official website
• Wikipedia