Castelvecchio Historical Timeline

Castelvecchio has been rebuilt by every power that has held Verona, and the two most consequential rebuildings are both from the twentieth century. What a visitor walks through is a Scaliger fortress reinterpreted twice over — once in the 1920s by an architect inventing a medieval past, and once in the 1960s by one refusing to.

Chronology

1. 1354–1376 Cangrande II della Scala begins the castle; he dies in 1359, midway through it. He was defending himself against Verona as much as against anyone outside it, which is why the heavier defences face inward toward the city — visible as soon as you notice which way the walls look.
2. 1387 Scaliger rule of Verona ends on 19 October. The castle stops being anyone’s residence and spends the following centuries as a garrison, which is why so little domestic detail survives inside it.
3. 1796–1797 French troops damage the castle during the Napoleonic wars, in reprisal for the anti-French rising. Napoleon himself stayed here on visits to Verona.
4. 1924 Antonio Avena, director of the civic museums, and Ferdinando Forlati of the Soprintendenza carry out a restoration explicitly in stile medievale. Several of the most convincingly medieval details on the courtyard front date from this campaign rather than from the Middle Ages.
5. 1945 The retreating German army blows up every bridge in Verona, this one included.
6. 1949 The bridge is rebuilt, using original material recovered from the Adige where it could be salvaged. It is medieval design in largely medieval stone, assembled after the war.
7. 1958–1974 Carlo Scarpa’s restoration and installation. The main gallery work was finished by 1964 and the last room only in the mid-1970s — the reason many people now come is a project that took longer than the original castle.
8. 2015 Seventeen Old Master paintings are stolen in November. Ukrainian border guards recovered all of them in May 2016 and they were back in Verona by that December.

What survived, and what was added

Scarpa’s rule was that new work must never pretend to be old. Concrete, steel and Prun stone are used frankly; floors float clear of the walls; sculpture stands on supports that are obviously supports. The equestrian Cangrande hangs on an exposed concrete cantilever precisely so nobody can mistake its mounting for medieval work.

That was a direct answer to the 1924 restoration, which had done the opposite — working in stile medievale to produce a castle that looked more medieval than it had ever been. Both campaigns are visible, and telling them apart is most of the pleasure of the building.

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