Discover Verona Cathedral

Verona's cathedral sits in a bend of the Adige at the northern end of the old city, and it is not one building but a walled precinct of several.

The church itself is Romanesque below and Gothic above, with a carved porch by Nicolò -- the sculptor of San Zeno's facade -- whose door jambs carry Roland and Oliver, the paladins of Charlemagne, in a Christian cathedral.

Inside is Titian's Assumption, painted around 1535 for a chapel screened by Sanmicheli. Alongside stand the baptistery, the church of Sant'Elena, a Romanesque cloister and the Biblioteca Capitolare, one of the oldest working libraries in the world.

The facade divides horizontally: Romanesque tufa and marble at the bottom, Gothic above, with the join plainly visible.

Nicolò's porch is the outstanding piece -- a two-storey projecting canopy on columns resting on griffins, its jambs carved with Roland and Oliver, named in inscriptions. Chivalric romance on a cathedral door is not an accident; the Charlemagne cycle was understood as Christian.

The interior is Gothic: tall pointed arches, a raised presbytery, and side chapels added over centuries.

Sanmicheli's choir screen of the 1530s is a semicircular colonnade around the presbytery, a Renaissance object set inside a Gothic church and deliberately not pretending otherwise.

The precinct also holds San Giovanni in Fonte, the twelfth-century baptistery with a font carved from a single block of marble; the church of Sant'Elena; and a Romanesque cloister with early-Christian pavements beneath it.

The facade divides horizontally, and the join is deliberate. Tufa and marble Romanesque below, Gothic above, with the change of period plainly visible rather than smoothed over. The lower half is twelfth-century work; the upper belongs to the later rebuilding.

Nicolò’s porch. A two-storey projecting canopy on columns resting on griffins — the same protiro idea as San Zeno, built taller. The jambs are carved with Roland and Oliver and their names are inscribed, so the identification is not a modern guess.

A precinct, not a building. The complex grew as a walled episcopal compound: cathedral, baptistery of San Giovanni in Fonte with its single carved font cut from one block, Sant’Elena, the canons’ cloister, and the bishop’s palace. Under the cloister the floors of the earlier churches remain in place, which is why parts of the walking surface are glass and raised walkway.

Local stone throughout. As everywhere in Verona, the material is tufa for structure and Verona marble for anything meant to be seen — the same combination as San Zeno, Sant’Anastasia and the civic buildings.

Does one ticket cover everything? Yes — cathedral, baptistery, Sant’Elena and the cloister are one admission, and the Verona Card includes it.

Where is the Titian? In the Nichesola chapel, on the left side of the nave. It is in the chapel it was painted for.

What is under the cloister? The remains of earlier Christian buildings on the site, left in place and crossed on raised walkways rather than lifted out and displayed.