Chiesa di San Giovanni in Valle

San Giovanni in Valle preserves Verona at its most quietly ancient: a Lombard-era parish rebuilt in tuff after the 1117 earthquake, with a crypt holding Roman sarcophagi and, by tradition, the relics of two apostles.

Why it matters

Verona's left bank keeps its own early Christian geography, and San Giovanni in Valle is its centrepiece. The municipal tourism portal describes a Romanesque parish church built in the Lombard era, between the seventh and eighth centuries, on ground already used as a burial area; the foundation that now opens it places the church on an ancient Roman and paleo-Christian cemetery. Around it cluster the memories of kings: the complex stands beside the former residences of Theodoric in the sixth century and Berengar in the ninth, whose surrounding wall survives in part. After the earthquake of 1117 devastated the city, the church was rebuilt in tuff in the characteristic Veronese Romanesque, and that building — with its twelfth-century church, cloister and collegiate quarters — is what travellers enter today.

What to notice

The crypt holds two ancient sarcophagi, one dated to the third century and the other to the fourth or fifth. The raised presbytery above admits daylight. Tradition holds that one Roman sarcophagus contains the relics of the apostles Simon the Canaanite and Jude Thaddaeus; a carved lid showing the saints, attributed to Antonio da Mestre in 1395, marks it. The national tourism board notes Corinthian-derived capitals of varied carving on the columns and pillars of the nave, and two masonry styles in the apses — brick alternating with pebbles against square tuff blocks — both typical of Veronese Romanesque construction. The church also preserves frescoes: twelfth-century work on the walls and later paintings from the schools of Martino and Altichiero, with early-fifteenth-century fragments in the crypt itself.

Context and history

The church is dedicated to John the Baptist, and the foundation records that baptisms were performed here — fitting for a church whose name, in the valley, marks one of the earliest Christian parishes of the city. The national tourism board dates the present complex, comprising church, portico, bell tower and rectory, to the second decade of the twelfth century, consecrated by Bishop Ognibene in 1164, on a site with an earlier religious nucleus from the Carolingian era. The Second World War left its scar: bombing on 10 and 11 October 1944 tore open two bays and brought down part of the crypt ceiling, repaired in the post-war restoration. The foundation Verona Minor Hierusalem includes the church in its work on the water heritage of Verona's east bank.