Tourist Attraction in Verona:
Castelvecchio "Castello di San Martino in Aquaro "

Castelvecchio, originally called Castello di San Martino in Aquaro, is a castle in Verona currently used to house the civic museum, it is the most important military monument of the Scaligera family. Initially the castle took the name of San Martino in Aquaro, derived from the pre-existing church enclosed in the Corte d'Armi, whose existence dated back to the VIII century. The toponym can be traced to both the proximity of the Adigetto (aquarium or canal), and the proximity of a bridge (quaro), which would have passed the same channel, or the Adige. It took the name of Castel Vecchio only after the construction of the castles San Felice and San Pietro. The new castle was pruned between the head of the town on the right of Adige, near the Upper Chain, and the head of the town on the left of Adige, near the Porta San Giorgio. The functional and architectural essence of its position is that of constituting an element of urban defense inseparable from the river, and at the same time predisposed to project its action beyond the river itself. The bridge, for the exclusive use of the castle, served as an escape or access route for aid coming from the Valle dell'Adige, thus preventing the river from becoming an insurmountable barrier. But within the complex urban defensive system it could be used to organize sorties in order to operate tactically on the opposite river banks. The castle was designed as the fulcrum of the entire defense system, and its main tower as the center of the visual control of the city, on the left and right of Adige, and the surrounding landscape. general, from the importance of its position in the urban organism, and in particular from its close link, morphological and functional, with the city walls erected in the communal era along the Adigetto. The presence of the door generated by the ancient Arco dei Gavi, incorporated in the same municipal city wall, is not negligible here. Another element of the hypothetical original configuration of the castle may have been the construction commissioned by Alberto I della Scala, in 1298, of the Regas, the wall that was used to stem the Adige in the great loop between the municipal walls and the walled village of San Zeno. The municipal walls, the Adigetto, the walls of Alberto on the river bank, delimitated an irregular trapezium-shaped structure, suitable for extending the defense towards the outside, with a new wall enclosure, destined to become the western cornerstone of the municipal boundary . This may be the primitive nucleus of the castle at the end of the 13th century, now recognizable in the trapezium enclosure. The definitive intervention wanted by Cangrande II della Scala, attributable to 1354, constitutes a real urban castle. He commissioned the construction of the castle to the faithful Guglielmo Bevilacqua [1] Arranged the existing fortress south of the city walls, which took the form of the fortified residence, to the north of the same wall was built the large rectangular enclosure of the Court of Arms. At the same time the bridge over the Adige was built. The fortification complex was completed in 1376 by Antonio and Bartolomeo della Scala, with the construction of the Mastio. Elaboration of text Giovambattista Spagnuolo (Myooni)

Attractions in Verona