Piazza delle Erbe Historical Timeline

The square is long and narrow because it still occupies the footprint of the Roman forum, and nothing here was ever planned as a composition — the outline is an inheritance and the frontages are infill. Every regime that held Verona put a monument in it, and they are all still standing next to one another.

Chronology

1. 49 B.C. Verona is raised to the rank of municipium and the forum area is defined. The proportions of the square are fixed at this moment and have never been redrawn.
2. c. 20 B.C. The Capitolium is completed at the southern end — the temple whose terrace the Corte Sgarzerie cryptoporticus was built to hold up.
3. mid-1st century A.D. A major renovation adds porticoes and public buildings, and by the end of the century the forum has reached its rectangular form of roughly 168 by 58 metres.
4. 1207 The Berlina, the canopied stone where civic ceremonies and punishments took place, is possibly first erected under the podestà Azzo d’Este; it is rebuilt in 1378 under the della Scala.
5. 1370 Cansignorio della Scala raises the Torre del Gardello. Its clock face arrives in 1421 and the tower is raised to 44 metres in 1626 — three centuries of a single tower being improved.
6. 14th century Cansignorio also commissions the fountain, built around a Roman statue adapted with medieval additions. The figure and the basin do not quite match because they are a thousand years apart.
7. 1517 Verona returns to Venetian rule on 18 January. That same year Matteo Mazzanti buys the house on the long side that still carries his name; Alberto Cavalli frescoes it later in the century.
8. 1524 The Lion of Saint Mark is raised on the column on 18 March — Venice announcing ownership in the middle of the old Roman forum.
9. 1626 Permission is granted to rebuild Palazzo Maffei, which closes the north end; its third floor is added between 1663 and 1668.
10. 1797 The Lion is destroyed in May during the French occupation. The column stands empty for most of a century.
11. 1886 A committee decides to restore the Venetian symbol to the column. The lion a visitor photographs today is that restoration, not the one Venice put there.

Reading the square

Verona had no good building stone, so the facades are brick, rendered and then frescoed — painting was the cheap way to get the effect of carved decoration. Case Mazzanti is the best surviving example; most of the square was once treated this way and the weather took the rest.

The monuments date themselves by what they assert. A commune built the fountain and the Berlina, the Scaligeri raised the tower, Venice planted the lion, and the Baroque palace closes the end. Each one is a government announcing itself in the space the last one used.

• Official website
• Wikipedia