Verona lives through the imagination of Shakespeare as a city of passionate romance. In the flesh, its rose-veined marbles and the ‘strong sweep of the Gothic traceries drawn in the deep serenity of the starry sky’ (Ruskin), do not disappoint the spirit.

For the Renaissance inhabitants of Verona and its surrounding towns, the strong presence of ancient Rome simply could not be ignored and became a major source of inspiration. Verona’s Arena, the third largest Roman amphitheatre in the world, inspires 150,000 people at the Verona music festival each year. Basalt-paved Roman roads became the celebrated cellars of Verona’s palazzi. Marble blocks and statues from Roman villas were proudly re-erected in the Piazza delle Erbe, once the forum, by the Scaligari family in the 14c.

The magnificent Roman city gates, Porta Borsari and Porta Leoni, ushered visitors into a city of magnificent doorways. The portals of the Cathedral and of San Zeno offer, in energetic and vivid figures by Nicholaus, some of the finest of all Italian Romanesque sculpture. The mighty span of the 14c Ponte Scaligero forms a great doorway over the water. Even the world-renowned San Zeno altarpiece of Mantegna, (directly inspired by the Donatello reliefs in Padua) sets Madonna, Child and Saints in the convincing architectural space of a Romanesque triple portal.

Portal on the Renaissance itself, Padua is reputed to have been founded in 1183 BC, and to be the oldest town in northern Italy. The legendary Scrovegni Chapel built and decorated by Giotto in 1305 as a portal to the next world directed later artists, like Altichiero in the Basilica of Sant­­Antonio, to new perceptions of realism and form in painting. The Palazzo del Capitanio has an exquisite Renaissance portal of 1532 by the Veronese architect-sculptor Giovanni Maria Falconetto.

In the doorway-like arched backgrounds to Donatello’s overwhelmingly-moving Miracle reliefs for the altar at San Antonio, and in the sculptor’s full-size equestrian figure of the mighty dictator of Padua, the Gattamelata, based on the statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, we are brought full circle, from omnipresent ancient Roman to Renaissance architecture and sculpture of the highest order.

Day 1

Flight to Verona, introductory walkabout: Arena, Piazza della Erbe

Day 2

Verona, San Fermo, Sant’ Anastasia, Scaglieri tombs, Duomo, Teatro Romano, Giusti Gardens

Day 3

Padua; Arena chapel

Day 4

Picture gallery, S. Zeno, Villa della Torre Cazzola (Fermano),Villa Arvedi (private view, guided by Paolo Arvedi)

Day 5

Verona: Free morning, departure.