Complesso del Duomo di Verona

Verona's cathedral is not one building but a compound: a Romanesque Duomo, a round baptistery, a sunken early-Christian church and a canon's cloister. The complex records fifteen centuries of the city's religious life, from fourth-century mosaics to a Titian altarpiece.

Why it matters

This is the mother church of the diocese, and its Italian name, Santa Maria Matricolare, says exactly that. What makes the visit unusual is the vertical and horizontal depth: the site was first occupied by Roman villas with private bath suites, then by the city's first paleo-Christian basilica, and the modern complex still lets you walk over the mosaic floors of both. The cathedral itself is the third church on the spot, rebuilt after the devastating 1117 earthquake and given the two Romanesque porches that remain its signature on the facade. Inside waits one of the great Venetian altarpieces — Titian's Assumption of the Virgin — surrounded by Renaissance chapels, while the baptistery beside it preserves a medieval carved font that ranks among the finest sculptures in the city.

What to notice

Begin at the facade: the lower porch is the double-storey prothyrum carved by the master Nicolò in 1138, its lunette and reliefs among the earliest datable works of Veronese Romanesque sculpture. Inside, the nave was remodelled between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, so the chapels read Renaissance and Mannerist rather than medieval; look for the works the operators name by Falconetto, Liberale, Giolfino and Torbido, the semicircular choir screen attributed to Michele Sanmicheli, and above all the Assumption of the Virgin that Titian painted for the Cartolari-Nichesola chapel, a two-plane composition in which the Madonna looks down on the apostles from a break in the clouds. Then cross into San Giovanni in Fonte, the baptistery, whose octagonal marble basin — carved from a single block — deserves unhurried attention. Finally descend into Sant'Elena, where floors from both paleo-Christian basilicas survive as carpets of geometric mosaic, still in the position where their congregations walked.

Context and history

The first basilica on this ground was consecrated by Saint Zeno, bishop of Verona, between 362 and 380, and stood where Sant'Elena rises today; it was quickly replaced by a larger church, which collapsed around the seventh century, probably in a fire or an earthquake. Between the eighth and ninth centuries the archdeacon Pacifico directed the reconstruction, and the cathedral was rebuilt further south under the name of Santa Maria Matricolare. The earthquake of 1117 — which damaged so much of Verona — wrecked this church too, and at least twenty years of rebuilding produced the present width and the two Romanesque porches. The sixteenth-century interior refit added side chapels and the choir screen, while the Renaissance and baroque centuries kept furnishing the altars. The complex also retains the Canonicato, the canons' cloister with its own archaeological layers, and the capitular library, one of the oldest working libraries in Italy.