Chiesa di San Lorenzo

Between Castelvecchio and the river, San Lorenzo has a raised women's gallery reached by twin stair towers set within the facade. Rebuilt after the earthquake of 1117, it preserves an unusual Romanesque interior.

Why it matters

San Lorenzo is the quietest of Verona's medieval churches, and precisely for that reason it shows its age openly. The municipal tourism portal describes a Romanesque church of the early twelfth century built on the site of an earlier palaeo-Christian basilica, whose decoration fragments are still visible in the entrance courtyard. A destination portal records an early Christian history and the church's rebuilding after the earthquake of 1117. What survives is a three-aisled church with a matroneum — a gallery over the side aisles opening onto the nave — that the portal calls unique in the city, reached through two cylindrical stair towers flanking the facade. The building is now cared for by a volunteer foundation.

What to notice

The facade combines bands of yellow-ochre tufa and red brick, with some courses of river pebbles laid in a herringbone, or spina di pesce, pattern, characteristic of Veronese Romanesque masonry. The two round stair towers that flank it are the signature feature: unusual cylindrical staircases, part of their material reportedly quarried from Verona's Arena, winding up inside the wall thickness to the matroneum above the side aisles. The gallery overlooks thirteenth- and fourteenth-century fresco fragments and loggias opening onto the central space; such upper walkways reflected divisions of sex or status in medieval congregations. On the main altar hangs the Madonna and Child appearing to saints that Domenico Brusasorci painted in 1566, with a fresco by Nicolò Giolfino in the chapel of the left aisle.

Context and history

The church stands along the ancient Via Postumia near the river bend, in what the foundation's itinerary text calls an area of early Christian burial. Attested from the early Middle Ages, it was rebuilt completely in the twelfth century after the 1117 earthquake; the destination portal adds that at the end of that century Pope Lucius III, resident in Verona, granted it privileges equal to those of San Lorenzo fuori le mura in Rome. Later centuries altered it heavily: a suspended porch and the bell tower date to the second half of the fifteenth century, the tower was rebuilt again in recent times, and major restorations came in 1877 and again after the Second World War. Two saints' stories attach to it: Santa Maddalena di Canossa was baptised here in 1774, and in 1901 San Giovanni Calabria, who had lived for a time in the galleries with his family, celebrated his first Mass at its altar.