Verona boasts many spectacular sights and the Castelvecchio is surely in the top 3 with its colourful interior and medieval bridge. The castle is a fourteenth century creation of the Scala family, lords of the city and was restored in the 1960s.
Visiting Castelvecchio
The castle is situated in the centre of Verona, on the banks of the river Adige. Parking is probably best across the river in the Saba carpark or south of the old city there are several carparks inside the inner ring road. The city is incredibly easy to walk around with the two main Roman streets bisecting it North – South and West – East and walking from one side to the other takes about 10 minutes.
Current opening times for the castle are 10AM – 6PM each day except Mondays and admission is €9. The bridge is open 24 hours a day and is wonderful to walk across in the evening. Full details are on the castle website here.
My Experience
I spent a couple of hours in the museum and walking the battlements of the castle. The frescoes inside were fantastic and showed what a colourful place the interior would have been 700 years ago. There were some wonderful paintings and stonework as well as painted statues and the ladder emblem of the Scala family was everywhere. It must have been a shock to English knights that travelled to fight as mercenaries in Italy to see the opulence of the cities compared to the ones they left behind.
The armoury had various weapons and pieces of armour from the medieval period. The battlements gave excellent views of the attached bridge, naturally, as well as visibility of the town and river. It was all very well preserved and safe to walk around with pretty much all the information shown in both English and Italian. The weather was absolutely glorious which helped, chilly but wonderful blue sky and sunshine.
I walked across the marvellous Castelvecchio Bridge (I’m still angry it was blown up by the Germans in 1945) and then followed the path of the river for a mile or so to reach the Roman Theatre.
Castelvecchio Photo Gallery
History
The castle stands on the probable location of a Roman fortress outside the Roman city. Lord Cangrande II della Scala had it built along with its bridge across the Adige River as a deterrent to his powerful neighbors such as Venice, the Gonzaga and the Sforza families.[2] Construction was carried out between 1354 and 1376 (Cangrande died in 1359). The fortified bridge was intended to allow the seigniors to escape safely northwards to the Tyrol in the event of a rebellion or a coup d’état (the Scaligeri were allies of the Holy Roman Empire) and when they eventually lost their hold on Verona, its surviving members left Italy to found a German branch of the family.
Later, during the Venetian domination, the bridge was further fortified to defend it with cannons. The castle was damaged by French troops during the Napoleonic Wars (1796–7), in retaliation to the Pasque Veronesi, when the local population staged a violent anti-French revolt. Napoleon had chosen to stay in Castelvecchio on his trips to Verona, but his widespread and arbitrary requisitions of citizens’ and churches’ property, the massive draft of male workers into the French army prompted the resistance that eventually drove out the invaders.
The bridge was destroyed by the retreating German army in 1945 and rebuilt in 1949.
Under the Austrians, Castelvecchio was turned into barracks.
In 1923 the castle was restored, as well as in 1963–1965.
References
The brief history above is copied from the Wiki site here.
The castle website with information on opening hours and prices is here.
There is a great guide to the museum in the castle on the ItalyGuides site.