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VENETIAN VERONA

The main concern of the Venetians was to fortify Verona and besides the fifteenth and sixteenth century palaces, the most important of which is undoubtedly the "Loggia di Fra'Giocondo" in Piazza dei Signori (Dante), the walls and the various military defensive and offensive mechanisms built and installed undoubtedly represent the most significant monuments of this period, many of which are the work of Michele Sanmicheli: these include the huge hilltop bastions, such as the Bastione delle Boccare, near the Church of S. Stefano, one of the most singular and imposing military structures of the XVI Century, and the town gates of Porta Palio, Porta Nuova, Porta Vescovo, and Porta S. Zeno.

The walls into which these gates were built were so thick and deep that they now house gardens and jogging runs (Bastioni di Spagna). Moreover, Venice pratically turned Verona into a siege town with the building of two well-fortified citadels: Castel S. Felice and Castel S. Pietro on the hills to north of the city and in the lower ground with "Cittadella": this work was the continuation of the original project of the Visconti Dukes in the twenty year period in which verona was a dominion of Milan at the end of the XIV Century. The Milanese architects had designed the whole city as a compact and massive fortress on its eastern border with rival power, Venice, which, however, took the city in 1404. This period also includes the palaces, such as Sanmicheli's Palazzo Bevilacqua in Corso Cavour and the later Palazzo della Gran Guardia, in Piazza Bra.

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